THOMAS   CARLYLE. 


SARTOR 

RESARTUS 


The  Life  and  Opinions  of 

HERR  TEUFELSDROCKH   .    , 

By  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Author  of  "  A  History  of  the  French  Revolution,"  "  Heroes  and 
Hero  Worship,"  "  Past  and  Present,"  etc.,  etc. 

h 


i  .*•••> 


A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY,      &      &      # 
&    *    *    PUBLISHERS,  NEW  YORK 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK  I. 

CHAP.  FAGH. 

I.  PRELIMINARY 5< 

II.  EDITORIAL  DIFFICULTIES n 

III.  REMINISCENCES 16 

IV.  CHARACTERISTICS 30 

V.  THE  WORLD  IN  CLOTHES 37 

VI.  APRONS 4 44 

VII.  MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 47 

VIII.  THE  WORLD  OUT  OF  CLOTHES 52 

IX.  ADAMITISM 59 

X.  PURE  REASON 65 

XI.  PROSPECTIVE 72 

BOOK  II. 

I.  GENESIS 82 

II.  IDYLLIC 91 

III.  PEDAGOGY. 101 

IV.  GETTING  UNDER  WAY 119 

V.  ROMANCE 133 

VI.  SORROWS  OF  TEUFELSDROCKH 148 

VII.  THE  EVERLASTING  No 159 

VIII.  CENTRE  OF  INDIFFERENCE 168 

IX.  THE  EVERLASTING  YEA 181 

X.  PAUSE 195 

BOOK  III. 

I.  INCIDENT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 204 

II.  CHURCH-CLOTHES 211 

III.  SYMBOLS » 215 


Iv  CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAGE. 

IV.  HELOTAGE 224 

V.  THE  PHCENIX 229 

VI.  OLD  CLOTHES 236 

VII.  ORGANIC  FILAMENTS 242 

VIII.  NATURAL  SUPERNATURALISM 252 

IX.  CIRCUMSPECTIVE 265 

X.  THE  DANDIACAL  BODY 270 

XI.  TAILORS 285 

XII.  FAREWELL 289 

APPENDIX  :  TESTIMONIES  OF  AUTHORS 296 

SUMMARY 305 


SARTOR  RESARTUS, 


BOOK  FIRST. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PRELIMINARY. 

CONSIDERING  our  present  advanced  state  of  culture, 
and  how  the  Torch  of  Science  has  now  been  bran- 
dished and  borne  about,  with  more  or  less  effect,  for 
five  thousand  years  and  upwards  ;  how,  in  these  times 
especially,  not  only  the  Torch  still  burns,  and  perhaps 
more  fiercely  than  ever,  but  innumerable  Rushlights, 
and  Sulphur-matches,  kindled  thereat,  are  also  glanc- 
ing in  every  direction,  so  that  not  the  smallest  cranny 
or  doghole  in  Nature  or  Art  can  remain  unilluminated, 
— it  might  strike  the  reflective  mind  with  some  surprise 
that  hitherto  little  or  nothing  of  a  fundamental  charac- 
ter, whether  in  the  way  of  Philosophy  or  History,  has 
been  written  on  the  subject  of  Clothes. 

Our  Theory  of  Gravitation  is  as  good  as  perfect : 
Lagrange,  it  is  well  known,  has  proved  that  the  Plan- 
etary System,  on  this  scheme,  will  endure  forever ; 
Laplace,  still  more  cunningly,  even  guesses  that  it 
could  not  have  been  made  on  any  other  scheme. 


6  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Whereby,  at  least,  our  nautical  Logbooks  can  be  bet- 
ter kept ;  and  water-transport  of  all  kinds  has  grown 
more  commodious.  Of  Geology  and  Geognosy  we 
know  enough  :  what  with  the  labors  of  our  Werners 
and  Huttons,  what  with  the  ardent  genius  of  their  dis- 
ciples, it  has  come  about  that  now,  to  many  a  Royal 
Society,  the  Creation  of  a  World  is  little  more  mysteri- 
ous than  the  cooking  of  a  dumpling  ;  concerning  which 
last,  indeed,  there  have  been  minds  to  whom  the  ques- 
tion, How  the  apples  were  got  in,  presented  difficulties. 
Why  mention  our  disquisitions  on  the  Social  Contract, 
on  the  Standard  of  Taste,  on  the  Migrations  of  the 
Herring  ?  Then,  have  we  not  a  Doctrine  of  Rent, 
a  Theory  of  Value  ;  Philosophies  of  Language,  of  His- 
tory, of  Pottery,  of  Apparitions,  of  Intoxicating  Liq- 
uors ?  Man's  whole  life  and  environment  have  been 
laid  open  and  elucidated  ;  scarcely  a  fragment  or  fibre 
of  his  Soul,  Body,  and  Possessions,  but  has  been  probed, 
dissected,  distilled,  desiccated,  and  scientifically  de- 
composed :  our  spiritual  Faculties,  of  which  it  appears 
there  are  not  a  few,  have  their  Stewarts,  Cousins,  Royer 
Collards  :  every  cellular,  vascular,  muscular  Tissue 
glories  in  its  Lawrences,  Majendies,  Bichats. 

How,  then,  comes  it,  may  the  reflective  mind  repeat, 
that  the  grand  Tissue  of  all  Tissues,  the  only  real  Tis- 
sue, should  have  been  quite  overlooked  by  Science, — 
the  vestural  Tissue,  namely,  of  woollen  or  other  cloth  ; 
which  Man's  Soul  wears  as  its  outmost  wrappage  and 
overall ;  wherein  his  whole  other  Tissues  are  included 
and  screened,  his  whole  Faculties  work,  his  whole  Self 
lives,  moves,  and  has  its  being  ?  F  or  if,  now  and  then, 
some  straggling  broken-winged  thinker  has  cast  an 
owl's-glance  into  this  obscure  region,  the  most  have 
soared  over  it  altogether  heedless ;  regarding  Clothes  as 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  f 

a  property,  not  an  accident,  as  quite  natural  and  spon- 
taneous, like  the  leaves  of  trees,  like  the  plumage  of 
birds.  In  all  speculations  they  have  tacitly  figured 
man  as  a  Clothed  Animal ;  whereas  he  is  by  nature  a 
Naked  Animal ;  and  only  in  certain  circumstances,  by 
purpose  and  device,  masks  himself  in  Clothes.  Shakes- 
peare says,  we  are  creatures  that  look  before  and  after  : 
the  more  surprising  that  we  do  not  look  round  a  little, 
and  see  what  is  passing  under  our  very  eyes. 

But  here,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  Germany, 
learned,  indefatigable,  deep-thinking  Germany  comes 
to  our  aid.  It  is,  after  all,  a  blessing  that,  in  these 
revolutionary  times,  there  should  be  one  country  where 
abstract  Thought  can  still  take  shelter ;  that  while  the 
din  and.  frenzy  of  Catholic  Emancipations,  and  Rotten 
Boroughs,  and  Revolts  of  Paris,  deafen  every  French 
and  every  English  ear,  the  German  can  stand  peaceful 
on  his  scientific  watch-tower ;  and,  to  the  raging, 
struggling  multitude  here  and  elsewhere,  solemnly, 
from  hour  to  hour,  with  preparatory  blast  of  cowhorn, 
emit  his  Horet  ihr  Herren  und  lasset's  Euch  sagen  ;  in 
other  words,  tell  the  Universe,  which  so  often  forgets 
that  fact,  what  o'clock  it  really  is.  Not  unfrequently 
the  Germans  have  been  blamed  for  an  unprofitable  dili- 
gence ;  as  if  they  struck  into  devious  courses,  where 
nothing  was  to  be  had  but  the  toil  of  a  rough  journey  ; 
as  if,  forsaking  the  gold-mines  of  finance  and  that 
political  slaughter  of  fat  oxen  whereby  a  man  himself 
grows  fat,  they  were  apt  to  run  goose-hunting  into 
regions  of  bilberries  and  crowberries,  and  be  swallowed 
up  at  last  in  remote  peat-bogs.  Of  that  unwise  science, 
which,  as  our  Humorist  expresses  it, — 

"  By  geometric  scale 
Doth  take  thejsize  of  pots  of  ale ; " 


8  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Still  more,  of  that  altogether  misdirected  industry, 
which  is  seen  vigorously  thrashing  mere  straw,  there 
can  nothing  defensive  be  said.  In  so  far  as  the 
Germans  are  chargeable  with  such,  let  them  take  the 
consequence.  Nevertheless  be  it  remarked,  that  even 
a  Russian  steppe  has  tumuli  and  gold  ornaments ;  also 
many  a  scene  that  looks  desert  and  rock-bound  from 
the  distance,  will  unfold  itself,  when  visited,  into  rare 
valleys.  Nay,  in  any  case,  would  Criticism  erect  not 
only  finger-posts  and  turnpikes,  but  spiked  gates  and 
impassable  barriers,  for  the  mind  of  man  ?  It  is  writ- 
ten, "  Many  shall  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall 
be  increased."  Surely  the  plain  rule  is,  Let  each  con- 
siderate person  have  his  way,  and  see  what  it  will 
lead  to.  For  not  this  man  and  that  man,  but  all  men 
make  up  mankind,  and  their  united  tasks  the  task 
of  mankind.  How  often  have  we  seen  some  such 
adventurous,  and  perhaps  much-censured  wanderer 
light  on  some  out-lying,  neglected,  yet  vitally  moment- 
ous province ;  the  hidden  treasures  of  which  he  first 
discovered,  and  kept  proclaiming  till  the  general  eye 
and  effort  were  directed  thither,  and  the  conquest  was 
completed ; — thereby,  in  these  his  seemingly  so  aim- 
less rambles,  planting  new  standards,  founding  new 
habitable  colonies,  in  the  immeasurable  circumambient 
realm  of  Nothingness  and  Night !  Wise  man  was  he 
who  counselled  that  Speculation  should  have  free 
course,  and  look  fearlessly  towards  all  the  thirty-two 
points  of  the  compass,  whithersoever  and  howsoever  it 
listed. 

Perhaps  it  is  proof  of  the  stunted  condition  in  which 
pure  Science,  especially  pure  moral  Science,  languishes 
among  us  English  ;  and  how  our  mercantile  greatness, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  g 

and  invaluable  Constitution,  impressing  a  political  or 
other  immediately  practical  tendency  on  all  English 
culture  and  endeavor,  cramps  the  free  flight  of  Thought, 
— that  this,  not  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  but  recognition 
even  that  we  have  no  such  Philosophy,  stands  here  for 
the  first  time  published  in  our  language.  What  Eng- 
lish intellect  could  have  chosen  such  a  topic,  or  by 
chance  stumbled  on  it  ?  But  for  that  same  unshackled, 
and  even  sequestered  condition  of  German  Learned, 
which  permits  and  induces  them  to  fish  in  all  manner 
of  waters,  with  all  manner  of  nets,  it  seems  probable 
enough,  this  abtruse  Inquiry  might,  in  spite  of  the 
results  it  leads  to,  have  continued  dormant  for  indefi- 
nite periods.  The  Editor  of  these  sheets,  though  other- 
wise boasting  himself  a  man  of  confirmed  speculative 
habits,  and  perhaps  discursive  enough,  is  free  to  con- 
fess, that  never,  till  these  last  months,  did  the  above 
very  plain  considerations,  on  our  total  want  of  a  Phi- 
losophy of  Clothes,  occur  to  him  ;  and  then,  by  quite 
foreign  suggestion.  By  the  arrival,  namely,  of  a  new 
Book  from  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  of  Weissnichtwo ; 
treating  expressly  of  this  subject,  and  in  a  style  which, 
whether  understood  or  not,  could  not  even  by  the 
blindest  be  overlooked.  In  the  present  Editor's  way  of 
thought,  this  remarkable  Treatise,  with  its  Doctrines, 
whether  as  judicially  acceded  to,  or  judicially  denied, 
has  not  remained  without  effect. 

' '  Die  Kleider,  ihr  Werden  und  Wirken  (Clothes, 
their  Origin  and  Influence)  :  von  Diog.  Teufelsdrockh. 
J.  U.  D. ,  etc.  Stillschweigen  und  Cognie.  Weissnichtwo, 

1831. 

"Here,"  says  the  Weissnichtwo 'sche  Anzeiger, 
"comes  a  Volume  of  that  extensive,  close-printed, 
close-meditated  sort,  which,  be  it  spoken  with  pride, 


10  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

is  seen  only  in  Germany,  perhaps  only  in  Weissnich- 
two.  Issuing  from  the  hitherto  irreproachable  Firm 
of  Stillschweigen  and  Company,  with  every  external 
furtherance,  it  is  of  such  internal  quality  as  to  set  Neg- 
lect at  defiance."  .  .  .  "A  work,"  concludes  the  well- 
nigh  enthusiastic  Reviewer,  "interesting  alike  to  the 
antiquary,  the  historian,  and  the  philosophic  thinker; 
a  masterpiece  of  boldness,  lynx-eyed  acuteness,  and 
rugged  independent  Germanism  and  Philanthropy  (der- 
ber  Kerndeutschheit  und  Menschenliebe)  ;  which  will 
not,  assuredly,  pass  current  without  opposition  in  high 
places  ;  but  must  and  will  exalt  the  almost  new  name 
of  Teufelsdrockh  to  the  first  ranks  of  Philosophy,  in 
our  German  Temple  of  Honor." 

Mindful  of  old  friendship,  the  distinguished  Pro- 
fessor, in  this  the  first  blaze  of  his  fame,  which  how- 
ever does  not  dazzle  him,  sends  hither  a  Presentation- 
copy  of  his  Book ;  with  compliments  and  encomiums 
which  modesty  forbids  the  present  Editor  to  rehearse  ; 
yet  without  indicated  wish  or  hope  of  any  kind,  except 
what  may  be  implied  in  the  concluding  phrase  :  Moclite 
es  (this  remarkable  Treatise)  auch  im  Brittischen  Boden 
gedeihen  I 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  II 


CHAPTER  II. 

EDITORIAL   DIFFICULTIES. 

IF  for  a  speculative  man,  "whose  seedfield,"  in  the 
sublime  words  of  the  Poet,  "  is  Time,"  no  conquest  is 
important  but  that  of  new  ideas,  then  might  the  arrival 
of  Professor  Teufelsdrb'ckh's  Book  be  marked  with 
chalk  in  the  Editor's  calendar.  It  is  indeed  an  "ex- 
tensive Volume,"  of  boundless,  almost  formless  con- 
tents, a  very  Sea  of  Thought ;  neither  calm  nor  clear, 
if  you  will ;  yet  wherein  the  toughest  pearl-diver  may 
dive  to  his  utmost  depth,  and  return  not  only  with  sea- 
wreck  but  with  true  orients. 

Directly  on  the  first  perusal,  almost  on  the  first 
deliberate  inspection,  it  became  apparent  that  here  a 
quite  new  Branch  of  Philosophy,  leading  to  as  yet  un- 
descried  ulterior  results,  was  disclosed ;  farther,  what 
seemed  scarcely  less  interesting,  a  quite  new  human 
Individuality,  an  almost  unexampled  personal  char- 
acter, that,  namely,  of  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  the  Dis- 
closer.  Of  both  which  novelties,  as  far  as  might  be 
possible,  we  resolved  to  master  the  significance.  But 
as  man  is  emphatically  a  proselytizing  creature,  no 
sooner  was  such  mastery  even  fairly  attempted,  than 
the  new  question  arose :  How  migh't  this  acquired 
good  be  imparted  to  others,  perhaps  in  equal  need 
thereof :  how  could  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  and  the 
Author  of  such  Philosophy,  be  brought  home,  in  any 


12  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

measure,  to  the  business  and  bosoms  of  our  own  Eng- 
lish Nation  ?  For  if  new-got  gold  is  said  to  burn  the 
pockets  till  it  be  cast  forth  into  circulation,  much  more 
may  new  truth. 

Here,  however,  difficulties  occurred.  The  first 
thought  naturally  was  to  publish  Article  after  Article 
on  this  remarkable  Volume,  in  such  widely-circulating 
Critical  Journals  as  the  Editor  might  stand  connected 
with,  or  by  money  or  love  procure  access  to.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  it  not  clear  that  such  matter  as 
must  here  be  revealed,  and  treated  of,  might  endan- 
ger the  circulation  of  any  Journal  extant  ?  If,  indeed 
all  party-divisions  in  the  State  could  have  been  abol- 
ished, Whig,  Tory,  and  Radical,  embracing  in  dis- 
crepant union ;  and  all  the  Journals  of  the  Nation 
could  have  been  jumbled  into  one  Journal,  and  the 
Philosophy  of  Clothes  poured  forth  in  incessant  tor- 
rents therefrom,  the  attempt  had  seemed  possible. 
But,  alas,  what  vehicle  of  that  sort  have  we,  except 
Eraser's  Magazine  ^  A  vehicle  all  strewed  (figura- 
tively speaking)  with  the  maddest  Waterloo-Crackers, 
exploding  distractively  and  destructively,  wheresoever 
the  mystified  passenger  stands  or  sits ;  nay,  in  any 
case,  understood  to  be,  of  late  years,  a  vehicle  full  to 
overflowing,  and  inexorably  shut !  Besides,  to  state 
the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  without  the  Philosopher, 
the  ideas  of  Teufelsdrockh  without  something  of  his 
personality,  was  it  not  to  insure  both  of  entire  misap- 
prehension ?  Now  for  Biography,  had  it  been  other- 
wise admissible,  there  were  no  adequate  documents, 
no  hope  of  obtaining  such,  but  rather,  owing  to  cir- 
cumstances, a  special  despair.  Thus  did  the  Editor 
see  himself,  for  the  while,  shut  out  from  all  public 
utterance  of  these  extraordinary  Doctrines,  and  con- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  t$ 

Strained  to  revolve  them,  not  without  disquietude,  in  the 
dark  depths  of  his  own  mind. 

So  had  it  lasted  for  some  months  ;  and  now  the 
Volume  on  Clothes,  read  and  again  read,  was  in  sev- 
eral points  becoming  lucid  and  lucent  ;  the  personality 
of  its  Author  more  and  more  surprising,  but,  in  spite  of 
all  that  memory  and  conjecture  could  do,  more  and 
more  enigmatic  ;  whereby  the  old  disquietude  seemed 
fast  settling  into  fixed  discontent, — when  altogether 
unexpectedly  arrives  a  letter  from  Herr  Hofrath  Heu- 
schrecke,  our  Professor's  chief  friend  and  associate  in 
Weissnichtwo,  with  whom  we  had  not  previously  cor- 
responded. The  Hofrath,  after  much  quite  extraneous 
matter,  began  dilating  largely  on  the  ' '  agitation  and 
attention  "  which  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  was  excit- 
ing in  it3  own  German  Republic  of  Letters  ;  on  the 
deep  significance  and  tendency  of  his  Friend's  Volume  ; 
and  then,  at  length,  with  great  circumlocution,  hinted 
at  the  practicability  of  conveying  "some  knowledge  of 
it,  and  of  him,  to  England,  and  through  England  to  the 
distant  West : "  a  work  on  Professor  Teufelsdrockh 
"were  undoubtedly  welcome  to  the  Family,  the  Na- 
tional, or  any  other  of  those  patriotic  Libraries,  at  pres- 
ent the  glory  of  British  Literature  ;  "  might  work  revolu- 
tions in  Thought ;  and  so  forth  ; — in  conclusion,  inti- 
mating not  obscurely,  that  should  the  present  Editor 
feel  disposed  to  undertake  a  Biography  of  Teufelsdrockh, 
he,  Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  had  it  in  his  power  to  furnish 
the  requisite  Documents. 

As  in  some  chemical  mixture,  that  has  stood  long 
evaporating,  but  would  not  crystallize,  instantly  when 
the  wire  or  other  fixed  substance  is  introduced,  crys- 
tallization commences,  and  rapidly  proceeds  till  the 
whole  is  finished,  so  was  it  with  the  Editor's  mind  and 


14  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

this  offer  of  Heuschrecke's.  Form  rose  out  of  void 
solution  and  discontinuity  ;  like  united  itself  with  like 
in  definite  arrangement :  and  soon  either  in  actual 
vision  and  possession,  or  in  fixed  reasonable  hope,  the 
image  of  the  whole  Enterprise  had  shaped  itself,  so  to 
speak,  into  a  solid  mass.  Cautiously  yet  courageously 
through  the  two  pennypost,  application  to  the  famed 
redoubtable  OLIVER  YORKE  was  now  made  :  an  inter- 
view, interviews  with  that  singular  man  have  taken 
place*';  with  more  of  assurance  on  our  side,  with  less 
of  satire  (at  least  of  open  satire)  on  his,  than  we  antici- 
pated ; — for  the  rest,  with  such  issue  as  is  now  visible. 
As  to  those  same  "patriotic  Libraries,"  the  Hofrath's 
counsel  could  only  be  viewed  with  silent  amazement ; 
but  with  his  offer  of  Documents  we  joyfully  and  almost 
instantaneously  closed.  Thus,  too,  in  the  sure  expec- 
tation of  these,  we  already  see  our  task  begun ;  and 
this  our  Sartor  Resartus,  which  is  properly  a  "Life  and 
Opinions  of  Herr  Teufelsdrockh, "  hourly  advancing. 

Of  our  fitness  for  the  Enterprise,  to  which  we  have 
such  title  and  vocation,  it  were  perhaps  uninteresting 
to  say  more.  Let  the  British  reader  study  and  enjoy, 
in  simplicity  of  heart,  what  is  here  presented  him,  and 
with  whatever  metaphysical  acumen  and  talent  for 
meditation  he  is  possessed  of.  Let  him  strive  to  keep 
a  free,  open  sense  ;  cleared  from  the  mists  of  prejudice, 
above  all  from  the  paralysis  of  cant ;  and  directed 
rather  to  the  Book  itself  than  to  the  Editor  of  the  Book. 
Who  or  what  such  Editor  may  be,  must  remain  con- 
jectural, and  even  insignificant  r1  it  is  a  voice  publish- 
ing tidings  of  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ;  undoubtedly  a 
Spirit  addressing  Spirits  :  whoso  hath  ears,  let  him  hear. 

1  With  us  even  he  still  communicates  in  some  sort  of  mask,  or 
muffler :  and,  we  have  reason  to  think,  under  a  feigned  name  !— O.  Y. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  15 

On  one  other  point  the  Editor  thinks  it  needful  to 
give  warning  :  namely,  that  he  is  animated  with  a  true 
though  perhaps  a  feeble  attachment  to  the  Institutions 
of  our  Ancestors  ;  and  minded  to  defend  these,  accord- 
ing to  ability,  at  all  hazards  ;  nay,  it  was  partly  with  a 
view  to  such  defence  that  he  engaged  in  this  undertaking. 
To  stem,  or  if  that  be  impossible,  profitably  to  divert 
the  current  of  Innovation,  such  a  Volume  as  Teufels- 
drockh's,  if  cunningly  planted  down,  were  no  despicable 
pile,  or  floodgate,  in  the  logical  wear. 

For  the  rest,  be  it  nowise  apprehended,  that  any 
personal  connection  of  ours  with  Teufelsdrockh,  Heu- 
schrecke,  or  this  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  can  pervert  our 
judgment,  or  sway  us  to  extenuate  or  exaggerate. 
Powerless,  we  venture  to  promise,  are  those  private 
Compliments  themselves.  Grateful  they  may  well  be  ; 
as  generous  illusions  of  friendship  ;  as  fair  mementos 
of  bygone  unions,  of  those  nights  and  suppers  of  the 
gods,  when,  lapped  in  the  symphonies  and  harmonies 
of  Philosophic  Eloquence,  though  with  baser  accom- 
paniments, the  present  Editor  revelled  in  that  feast  of 
reason,  never  since  vouchsafed  him  in  so  full  measure  ! 
But  what  then  ?  A  micus  Plato,  magis  arnica  verilas  ; 
Teufelsdrockh  is  our  friend,  Truth  is  our  divinity. 
In  our  historical  and  critical  capacity,  we  hope  we  are 
strangers  to  all  the  world  ;  have  feud  or  favor  with  no 
one, — save  indeed  the  Devil,  with  whom,  as  with  the 
Prince  of  Lies  and  Darkness,  we  do  at  all  times  wage 
internecine  war.  This  assurance,  at  an  epoch  when 
puffery  and  quackery  have  reached  a  height  unexam- 
pled in  the  annals  of  mankind,  and  even  English  Editors, 
like  Chinese  Shopkeepers,  must  write  on  their  door- 
lintels  No  cheating  here, — we  thought  it  good  to  pre- 
mise. 


l6  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  III. 

REMINISCENCES. 

To  the  Author's  private  circle  the  appearance  of  this 
singular  Work  on  Clothes  must  have  occasioned  little 
less  surprise  than  it  has  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  For 
ourselves,  at  least,  few  things  have  been  more  unex- 
pected. Professor  Teufelsdrockh,  at  the  period  of  our 
acquaintance  with  him,  seemed  to  lead  a  quite  still  and 
self-contained  life  :  a  man  devoted  to  the  higher 
Philosophies,  indeed ;  yet  more  likely,  if  he  published 
at  all,  to  publish  a  refutation  of  Hegel  and  Bardili, 
both  of  whom,  strangely  enough,  he  included  under  a 
common  ban  ;  than  to  descend,  as  he  has  here  done, 
into  the  angry  noisy  Forum,  with  an  Argument  that 
cannot  but  exasperate  and  divide.  Not,  that  we  can 
remember,  was  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  once  touched 
upon  between  us.  If  through  the  high,  silent,  medi- 
tative Transcendentalism  of  our  Friend  we  detected  any 
practical  tendency  whatever,  it  was  at  most  Political, 
and  towards  a  certain  prospective,  and  for  the  present 
quite  speculative,  Radicalism ;  as  indeed  some  cor- 
respondence on  his  part,  with  Herr  Oken  of  Jena  was 
now  and  then  suspected ;  though  her  special  contribu- 
tions to  the  Isis  could  never  be  more  than  surmised  at. 
But,  at  all  events,  nothing  Moral,  still  less  anything 
Didactico-Religious,  was  looked  for  from  him. 

Well  do  we  recollect  the  last  words  he  spoke  in  our 


SA&TOR  KESARTUS.  if 

hearing ;  which  indeed,  with  the  Night  they  were 
uttered  in,  are  to  be  forever  remembered.  Lifting  his 
huge  tumbler  of  Gukguk, r  and  for  a  moment  lowering 
his  tobacco-pipe,  he  stood  up  in  full  coffee-house  (it  was 
Zur  Griinen  Gans,  the  largest  in  Weissnichtwo,  where 
all  the  Virtuosity,  and  nearly  all  the  Intellect  of  the 
place  assembled  of  an  evening)  ;  and  there,  with  low, 
soul-stirring  tone,  and  the  look  truly  of  an  angel, 
though  whether  of  a  white  or  of  a  black  one  might  be 
dubious,  proposed  this  toast :  Die  Sache  der  Armen  in 
Gottes  und  Teufels  Namen  (The  Cause  of  the  Poor,  in 

Heaven's  name  and *s)  !     One  full  shout,  breaking 

the  leaden  silence;  then  a  gurgle  of  innumerable  empty- 
ing bumpers,  again  followed  by  universal  cheering, 
returned  him  loud  acclaim.  It  was  the  finale  of  the 
night  :  resuming  their  pipes  ;  in  the  highest  enthusiasm 
amid  volumes  of  tobacco  smoke  ;  triumphant,  cloud- 
capt  without  and  within,  the  assembly  broke  up,  each 
to  his  thoughtful  pillow.  Bleibt  dock  ein  echter  Spass- 
und  Galgen-vogel,  said  several ;  meaning  thereby  that, 
one  day,  he  would  probably  be  hanged  for  his  demo- 
cratic sentiments.  Wo  sieckt  dock  der  Schalk  r>  added 
they,  looking  round  :  but  Teufelsdrockh  had  retired  by 
private  alleys,  and  the  Compiler  of  these  pages  beheld 
him  no  more. 

In  such  scenes  has  it  been  our  lot  to  live  with  this 
Philosopher,  such  estimate  to  form  of  his  purposes  and 
powers.  And  yet,  thou  brave  Teufelsdrockh,  who 
could  tell  what  lurked  in  thee?  Under  those  thick 
locks  of  thine,  so  long  and  lank,  overlapping  roof-wise 
the  gravest  face  we  ever  in  this  world  saw,  there  dwelt 
a  most  busy  brain.  In  thy  eyes  too,  deep  under  their 
shaggy  brows,  and  looking  out  so  still  and  dreamy,  have 
1  Gukguk  is  unhappily  only  an  academical — beer. 


l8  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

we  not  noticed  gleams  of  an  ethereal  or  else  a  diabolic 
fire,  and  half-fancied  that  their  stillness  was  but  the 
rest  of  infinite  motion,  the  sleep  of  a  spinning-top  ?  Thy 
little  figure,  there  as,  in  loose  ill-brushed  threadbare 
habiliments,  thou  sattest,  amid  litter  and  lumber,  whole 
days,  to  "think  and  smoke  tobacco/'  held  in  it  a 
mighty  heart.  The  secrets  of  man's  Life  were  laid  open 
to  thee  ;  thou  sawest  into  the  mystery  of  the  Universe 
farther  than  another ;  thou  hadst  in  petto  thy  remark- 
able Volume  on  Clothes.  Nay,  was  there  not  in  that 
clear  logically-founded  Transcendentalism  of  thine  ;  still 
more,  in  thy  meek,  silent,  deep-seated  Sansculottism, 
combined  with  a  true  princely  Courtesy  of  inward 
nature,  the  visible  rudiments  of  such  speculation  ?  But 
great  men  are  too  often  unknown,  or  what  is  worse,  mis- 
known.  Already,  when  we  dreamed  not  of  it,  the  warp 
of  thy  remarkable  Volume  lay  on  the  loom  ;  and  silently, 
mysterious  shuttles  were  putting-in  the  woof ! 

How  the  Hofrath  Heuschrecke  is  to  furnish  biograph- 
ical data,  in  this  case,  may  be  a  curious  question  ;  the 
answer  of  which,  however,  is  happily  not  our  concern, 
but  his.  To  us  it  appeared,  after  repeated  trial,  that  in 
Weissnichtwo,  from  the  archives  or  memories  of  the 
best-informed  classes,  no  Biography  of  Teufelsdrockh 
was  to  be  gathered ;  not  so  much  as  a  false  one.  He 
was  a  stranger  there,  wafted  thither  by  what  is  called 
the  course  of  circumstances  ;  concerning  whose  parent- 
age, birthplace,  prospects,  or  pursuits,  curiosity  had 
indeed  made  inquiries,  but  satisfied  herself  with  the 
most  indistinct  replies.  For  himself,  he  was  a  man  so 
still  and  altogether  unparticipating,  that  to  question 
him  even  afar  off  on  such  particulars  was  a  thing  of 
more  than  usual  delicacy  :  besides,  in  his  sly  way,  he 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  ig 

had  ever  some  quaint  turn,  not  without  its  satirical  edge, 
wherewith  to  divert  such  intrusions,  and  deter  you  from 
the  like.  Wits  spoke  of  him  secretly  as  if  he  were  a 
kind  of  Melchizedek,  without  father  or  mother  of  any 
kind ;  sometimes,  with  reference  to  his  great  historic 
and  statistic  knowledge,  and  the  vivid  way  he  had  of 
expressing  himself  like  an  eye-witness  of  distant  trans- 
actions and  scenes,  they  called  him  the  Ewige  Jude, 
Everlasting,  or  as  we  say,  Wandering  Jew. 

To  the  most,  indeed,  he  had  become  not  so  much  a 
Man  as  a  Thing;  which  Thing  doubtless  they  were 
accustomed  to  see,  and  with  satisfaction  ;  but  no  more 
thought  of  accounting  for  than  for  the  fabrication  of 
their  daily  Allgemeine  Zeitung,  or  the  domestic  habits 
of  the  Sun.  Both  were  there  and  welcome ;  the  world 
enjoyed  what  good  was  in  them,  and  thought  no  more 
of  the  matter.  The  man  Teufelsdrockh  passed  and  re- 
passed,  in  his  little  circle,  as  one  of  those  originals  and 
nondescripts,  more  frequent  in  German  Universities 
than  elsewhere  ;  of  whom,  though  you  see  them  alive, 
and  feel  certain  enough  that  they  must  have  a  History, 
no  History  seems  to  be  discoverable  ;  or  only  such  as 
men  give  of  mountain  rocks  and  antediluvian  ruins  : 
That  they  have  been  created  by  unknown  agencies,  are 
in  a  state  of  gradual  decay,  and  for  the  present  reflect 
light  and  resist  pressure ;  that  is,  are  visible  and  tan- 
gible objects  in  this  phantasm  world,  where  so  much 
other  mystery  is. 

It  was  to  be  remarked  that  though,  by  title  and  di- 
ploma, Professor  der  Allerley-  Wissenschaft,  or  as  we 
should  say  in  English,  "  Professor  of  Things  in  Gen- 
eral," he  had  never  delivered  any  Course ;  perhaps 
never  been  incited  thereto  by  any  public  furtherance 
or  requisition.  To  all  appearance,  the  enlightened 


20  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Government  of  Weissnichtwo,  in  founding  their  New 
University,  imagined  they  had  done  enough,  if,  "  in 
times  like  ours,"  as  the  half-official  Program  expressed 
it,  "  when  all  things  are  rapidly  or  slowly,  resolving 
themselves  into  Chaos,  a  Professorship  of  this  kind  had 
been  established ;  whereby,  as  occasion  called,  the 
task  of  bodying  somewhat  forth  again  from  such  Chaos 
might  be,  even  slightly,  facilitated. "  That  actual  Lect- 
ures should  be  held,  and  Public  Classes  for  the  "  Sci- 
ence of  Things  in  General,"  they  doubtless  considered 
premature  ;  on  which  ground  too  they  had  only  estab- 
lished the  Professorship,  nowise  endowed  it  ;  so  that 
Teufelsdrockh,  ' '  recommended  by  the  highest  Names, " 
had  been  promoted  thereby  to  a  Name  merely. 

Great,  among  the  more  enlightened  classes,  was  the  ad- 
miration of  this  new  Professorship :  how  an  enlightened 
Government  had  seen  into  the  Want  of  the  Age  (Zeitbe- 
durfniss) ;  how  at  length,  instead  of  Denial  and  De- 
struction, we  were  to  have  a  science  of  Affirmation 
and  Reconstruction  ;  and  Germany  and  Weissnichtwo 
were  where  they  should  be,  in  the  vanguard  of  the 
world.  Considerable  also  was  the  wonder  at  the  new 
Professor,  dropt  opportunely  enough  into  the  nascent 
University ;  so  able  to  lecture,  should  occasion  call  ; 
so  ready  to  hold  his  peace  for  indefinite  periods,  should 
an  enlightened  Government  consider  that  occasion  did 
not  call.  But  such  admiration  and  such  wonder,  being 
followed  by  no  act  to  keep  them  living,  could  last  only 
nine  days ;  and,  long  before  our  visit  to  that  scene, 
had  quite  died  away.  The  more  cunning  heads 
thought  it  was  all  an  expiring  clutch  at  popularity,  on 
the  part  of  a  Minister,  whom  domestic  embarrassments, 
court  intrigues,  old  age,  and  dropsy  soon  afterwards 
finally  drove  from  the  helm. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  21 

As  for  Teufelsdrockh,  except  by  his  nightly  appear- 
ances at  the  Griine  Gans,  Weissnichtwo  saw  little  of 
him,  felt  little  of  him.  Here,  over  his  tumbler  of  Guk- 
guk,  he  sat  reading  Journals  ;  sometimes  contempla- 
tively looking  into  the  clouds  of  his  tobacco-pipe,  with- 
out other  visible  employment :  always,  from  his  mild 
ways,  an  agreeable  phenomenon  there ;  more  espe- 
cially when  he  opened  his  lips  for  speech  ;  on  which 
occasions  the  whole  Coffee-house  would  hush  itself  in- 
to silence,  as  if  sure  to  hear  something  noteworthy. 
Nay,  perhaps  to  hear  a  whole  series  and  river  of  the 
most  memorable  utterances ;  such  as,  when  once 
thawed,  he  would  for  hours  indulge  in,  with  fit  audi- 
ence :  and  the  more  memorable,  as  issuing  from  a 
head  apparently  not  more  interested  in  them,  not  more 
conscious  of  them,  than  is  the  sculptured  stone  head  of 
some  public  fountain,  which  through  its  brass  mouth- 
tube  emits  water  to  the  worthy  and  the  unworthy  ; 
careless-  whether  it  be  for  cooking  victuals  or  quench- 
ing conflagrations  ;  indeed,  maintains  the  same  earnest 
assiduous  look,  whether  any  water  be  flowing  or  not. 

To  the  Editor  of  these  sheets,  as  to  a  young  enthusi- 
astic Englishman,  however  unworthy,  Teufelsdrockh 
opened  himself  perhaps  more  than  to  the  most.  Pity 
only  that  we  could  not  then  half  guess  his  importance, 
and  scrutinize  him  with  due  power  of  vision  !  We 
enjoyed,  what  not  three  men  in  Weissnichtwo  could 
boast  of,  a  certain  degree  of  access  to  the  Professor's 
private  domicile.  It  was  the  attic  floor  of  the  highest 
house  in  the  Wahngasse ;  and  might  truly  be  called 
the  pinnacle  of  Weissnichtwo,  for  it  rose  sheer  up 
above  the  contiguous  roofs,  themselves  rising  from 
elevated  ground.  Moreover,  with  its  windows  it 
looked  towards  all  the  four  Orte,  or  as  the  Scotch  say, 


22  SARTOR  RESARTUS, 

and  we  ought  to  say,  Airts  :  the  sitting-room  itself 
commanded  three ;  another  came  to  view  in  the 
Schlafgemach  (bedroom)  at  the  opposite  end ;  to  say 
nothing  of  the  kitchen,  which  offered  two,  as  it  were, 
duplicates,  and  showing  nothing  new.  So  that  it  was 
in  fact  the  speculum  or  watch-tower  of  Teufelsdrockh ; 
wherefrom,  sitting  at  ease,  he  might  see  the  whole 
life-circulation  of  that  considerable  City  ;  the  streets  and 
lanes  of  which,  with  all  their  doing  and  driving  (Thun 
und  Treiben),  were  for  the  most  part  visible  there. 
"  I  look  down  into  all  that  wasp-nest  or  bee-hive," 
have  we  heard  him  say,  "and  witness  their  wax-lay- 
ing and  honey-making,  and  poison-brewing,  and  chok- 
ing by  sulphur.  From  the  Palace  esplanade,  where 
music  plays  while  Serene  Highness  is  pleased  to  eat 
his  victuals,  down  to  the  low  lane,  where  in  her  door- 
sill  the  aged  widow,  knitting  for  a  thin  livelihood,  sits 
to  feel  the  afternoon  sun,  I  see  it  all ;  for,  except  the 
Schlosskirche  weathercock,  no  biped  stands  so  high. 
Couriers  arrive  bestrapped  and  bebooted,  bearing  Joy 
and  Sorrow  bagged-up  in  pouches  of  leather  :  there, 
topladen,  and  with  four  swift  horses,  rolls-in  the  coun- 
try Baron  and  his  household ;  here,  on  timber-leg,  the 
lamed  Soldier  hops  painfully  along,  begging  alms  :  a 
thousand  carriages,  and  wains  and  cars,  come  tum- 
bling-in  with  Food,  with  young  Rusticity,  and  other 
Raw  Produce,  inanimate  or  animate,  and  go  tumbling 
out  again  with  Produce  manufactured.  That  living 
flood,  pouring  through  these  streets,  of  all  qualities  and 
ages,  knowest  thou  whence  it  is  coming,  whither  it  is 
going?  Aus  der  Ewigkeit,  zu  der Ewigkeit  hin  :  From 
Eternity,  onwards  to  Eternity  !  These  are  Appari- 
tions :  what  else  ?  Are  they  not  Souls  rendered  visi- 
ble :  in  Bodies,  that  took  shape  and  will  lose  it,  melt- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  23 

ing  into  air  ?  Their  solid  Pavement  is  a  Picture  of  the 
Sense ;  they  walk  on  the  bosom  of  Nothing,  blank 
Time  is  behind  them  and  before  them.  Or  fanciest 
thou,  the  red  and  yellow  Clothes-screen  yonder,  with 
spurs  on  its  heels  and  feather  in  its  crown,  is  but  of 
To-day,  without  a  Yesterday  or  a  To-morrow  ;  and 
had  not  rather  its  Ancestor  alive  when  Hengst  and 
Horsa  overran  thy  Island  ?  Friend,  thou  seest  here  a 
living  link  in  that  Tissue  of  History,  which  inweaves 
all  Being  :  watch  well,  or  it  will  be  past  thee,  and  seen 
no  more." 

"Achmet'n,  Lieber/"  said  he  once,  at  midnight,  when 
we  had  returned  from  the  Coffee-house  in  rather  ear- 
nest talk,  "  it  is  a  true  sublimity  to  dwell  here.  These 
fringes  of  lamplight,  struggling  up  through  smoke  and 
thousandfold  exhalation,  some  fathoms  into  the  an- 
cient reign  of  Night,  what  thinks  Bootes  of  them,  as  he 
leads  his  Hunting-Dogs  over  the  Zenith  in  their  leash 
of  sidereal  fire  ?  That  stifled  hum  of  Midnight,  when 
Traffic  has  lain  down  to  rest ;  and  the  chariot-wheels 
of  Vanity,  still  rolling  here  and  there  through  distant 
streets,  are  bearing  her  to  Halls  roofed-in,  and  lighted 
to  the  due  pitch  for  her  ;  and  only  Vice  and  Misery,  to 
prowl  or  to  moan  like  nightbirds,  are  abroad  :  that 
hum,  I  say,  like  the  stertorous,  unquiet  slumber  of 
sick  Life,  is  heard  in  Heaven  !  Oh,  under  that  hide- 
ous coverlet  of  vapors,  and  putrefactions,  and  unim- 
aginable gases,  what  a  Fermenting-vat  lies  simmering 
and  hid !  The  joyful  and  the  sorrowful  are  there ; 
men  are  dying  there,  men  are  being  born  ;  men  are 
praying, — on  the  other  side  of  a  brick  partition,  men 
are  cursing  ;  and  around  them  all  is  the  vast,  void 
Night.  The  proud  Grandee  still  lingers  in  his  per- 
fumed saloons,  or  reposes  within  damask  curtains ; 


24  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Wretchedness  cowers  into  truckle-beds,  or  shivers  hun- 
ger-stricken into  its  lair  of  straw  :  in  obscure  cellars, 
Rouge-et-Noir  languidly  emits  its  voice-of-destiny  to 
haggard  hungry  Villains  ;  while  Councillors  of  State 
sit  plotting,  and  playing  their  high  chess-game,  where- 
of the  pawns  are  Men.  The  Lover  whispers  his  mis- 
tress that  the  coach  is  ready  ;  and  she,  full  of  hope 
and  fear,  glides  down,  to  fly  with  him  over  the  bor- 
ders :  the  Thief,  still  more  silently,  sets-to  his  pick- 
locks and  crowbars,  or  lurks  in  wait  till  the  watchmen 
first  snore  in  their  boxes.  Gay  mansions,  with  supper- 
rooms  and  dancing-rooms,  are  full  of  light  and  music 
and  high-swelling  hearts  ;  but,  in  the  Condemned  Cells, 
the  pulse  of  life  beats  tremulous  and  faint,  and  blood- 
shot eyes  look-out  through  the  darkness,  which  is 
around  and  within,  for  the  light  of  a  stern  last  morn- 
ing. Six  men  are  to  be  hanged  on  the  morrow  :  comes 
no  hammering  from  the  Rabenstein  j3 — their  gallows 
must  even  now  be  a-building.  Upwards  of  five-hun- 
dred-thousand two-legged  animals  without  feathers  lie 
round  us,  in  horizontal  positions  ;  their  heads  all  in 
nightcaps,  and  full  of  the  foolishest  dreams.  Riot  cries 
aloud,  and  staggers  and  swaggers  in  his  rank  dens  of 
shame  ;  and  the  Mother,  with  streaming  hair,  kneels 
over  her  pallid  dying  infant,  whose  cracked  lips  only 
her  tears  now  moisten. — All  these  heaped  and  huddled 
together,  with  nothing  but  a  little  carpentry  and  ma- 
sonry between  them  ; — crammed  in,  like  salted  fish  in 
their  barrel  ; — or  weltering,  shall  I  say,  like  an  Egyp- 
tian pitcher  of  tamed  vipers,  each  struggling  to  get  its 
head  above  the  others  :  such  work  goes  on  under  that 
smoke-counterpane  ! — But  I,  mein  werther,  sit  above  it 
all ;  I  am  alone  with  the  Stars. " 
We  looked  in  his  face  to  see  whether,  in  the  utter- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  25 

ance  of  such  extraordinary  Night-thoughts,  no  feeling 
might  be  traced  there  ;  but  with  the  light  we  had,  which 
indeed  was  only  a  single  tallow-light,  and  far  enough 
from  the  window,  nothing  save  that  old  calmness  and 
fixedness  was  visible. 

These  were  the  Professor's  talking  seasons  :  most 
commonly  he  spoke  in  mere  monosyllables,  or  sat  alto- 
gether silent  and  smoked  ;  while  the  visitor  had  lib- 
erty either  to  say  what  he  listed,  receiving  for  answer 
an  occasional  grunt ;  or  to  look  round  for  a  space, 
and  then  take  himself  away.  It  was  a  strange  apart- 
ment ;  full  of  books  and  tattered  papers,  and  miscel- 
laneous shreds  of  all  conceivable  substances,  "united 
in  a  common  element  of  dust."  Books  lay  on  tables, 
and  below  tables ;  here  fluttered  a  sheet  of  manu- 
script, there  a  torn  handkerchief,  or  nightcap  hastily 
thrown  aside;  ink-bottles  alternated  with  bread-crusts, 
coffee-pots,  tobacco-boxes,  Periodical  Literature,  and 
Bliicher  Boots.  Old  Lieschen  (Lisekin,  'Liza),  who 
was  his  bed-maker  and  stove-lighter,  his  washer  and 
wringer,  cook,  errand-maid,  and  general  lion's-provider, 
and  for  the  rest  a  very  orderly  creature,  had  no  sover- 
eign authority  in  this  last  citadel  of  Teufelsdrockh  ; 
only  some  once  in  the  month  she  half-forcibly  made 
her  way  thither,  with  broom  and  duster,  and  (Teufels- 
drockh hastily  saving  his  manuscripts)  effected  a  par- 
tial clearance,  a  jail-delivery  of  such  lumber  as  was 
not  Literary.  These  were  her  Erdbeben  (earthquakes), 
which  Teufelsdrockh  dreaded  worse  than  the  pestilence  ; 
nevertheless,  to  such  length  he  had  been  forced  to 
comply.  Glad  would  he  have  been  to  sit  here  philos- 
ophizing forever,  or  till  the  litter,  by  accumulation, 
drove  him  out  of  doors  :  but  Lieschen  was  his  right- 
arm,  and  spoon,  and  necessary  of  life,  and  would  not 


26  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

be  flatly  gainsaid.  We  can  still  remember  the  ancient 
woman  ;  so  silent  that  some  thought  her  dumb ;  deaf 
also  you  would  often  have  supposed  her  ;  for  Teufels- 
drockh,  and  Teufelsdrockh  only,  would  she  serve  or 
give  heed  to  ;  and  with  him  she  seemed  to  communi- 
cate chiefly  by  signs  ;  if  it  were  not  rather  by  some 
secret  divination  that  she  guessed  all  his  wants,  and 
supplied  them.  Assiduous  old  dame !  she  scoured, 
and  sorted,  and  swept,  in  her  kitchen,  with  the  least 
possible  violence  to  the  ear;  yet  all  was  tight  and 
right  there  :  hot  and  black  came  the  coffee  ever  at 
the  due  moment ;  and  the  speechless  Lieschen  herself 
looked  out  on  you,  from  under  her  clean  white  coif 
with  its  lappets,  through  her  clean  withered  face  and 
wrinkles,  with  a  look  of  helpful  intelligence,  almost  of 
benevolence. 

Few  strangers,  as  above  hinted,  had  admittance 
hither  :  the  only  one  we  ever  saw  there,  ourselves  ex- 
cepted,  was  the  Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  already  known, 
by  name  and  expectation,  to  the  readers  of  these  pages. 
To  us,  at  that  period,  Herr  Heuschrecke  seemed  one 
of  those  purse-mouthed,  crane-necked,  clean-brushed, 
pacific  individuals,  perhaps  sufficiently  distinguished  in 
society  by  this  fact,  that,  in  dry  weather  or  in  wet, 
"they  never  appear  without  their  umbrella."  Had  we 
not  known  with  what  "little  wisdom  "  the  world  is 
governed  ;  and  how,  in  Germany  as  elsewhere,  the 
ninety-and-nine  Public  Men  can  for  most  part  be  but 
mute  train-bearers  to  the  hundredth,  perhaps  but  stalk- 
ing-horses and  willing  or  unwilling  dupes, — it  might 
have  seemed  wonderful  how  Herr  Heuschrecke  should 
be  named  a  Rath,  or  Councillor,  and  Counsellor,  even 
in  Weissnichtwo.  What  counsel  to  any  man,  or  to  any 
woman,  could  this  particular  Hofrath  give ;  in  whose 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  2? 

loose,  zigzag  figure  ;  in  whose  thin  visage,  as  it  went 
jerking  to  and  fro,  in  minute  incessant  fluctuation, — 
you  traced  rather  confusion  worse  confounded ;  at 
most,  Timidity  and  physical  Cold  ?  Some  indeed  said 
withal,  he  was  "the  very  Spirit  of  Love  embodied:" 
blue  earnest  eyes,  full  of  sadness  and  kindness  ;  purse 
ever  open,  and  so  forth  ;  the  whole  of  which,  we  shall 
now  hope,  for  many  reasons,  was  not  quite  ground- 
less. Nevertheless  friend  Teufelsdrockh's  outline,  who 
indeed  handled  the  burin  like  few  in  these  cases,  was 
probably  the  best  :  Er  hat  Gemiith  und  Gets/,  hat  wen- 
igstens  gehabt,  dock  ohne  Organ,  ohne  Schicksals-Gunst; 
ist  gegenwdrtig  aber  halb-zerruttet,  halberstarrt,  "  He 
has  heart  and  talent,  at  least  has  had  such,  yet  with- 
out fit  mode  of  utterance,  or  favor  of  Fortune ;  and 
so  is  now  half-cracked,  half-congealed." — What  the 
Hofrath  shall  think  of  this  when  he  sees  it,  readers 
may  wonder  :  we,  safe  in  the  stronghold  of  Historical 
Fidelity,  are  careless. 

The  main  point,  doubtless,  for  us  all,  is  his  love  of 
Teufelsdrockh,  which  indeed  was  also  by  far  the  most 
decisive  feature  of  Heuschrecke  himself.  We  are  en- 
bled  to  assert  that  he  hung  on  the  Professor  with  the 
fondness  of  a  Boswell  for  his  Johnson.  And  perhaps 
with  the  like  return  ;  for  Teufelsdrockh  treated  his  gaunt 
admirer  with  little  out  ward  regard,  as  some  half-rational 
or  altogether  irrational  friend,  and  at  best  loved  him  out 
of  gratitude  and  by  habit.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was 
curious  to  observe  with  what  reverent  kindness,  and  a 
sort  of  fatherly  protection,  our  Hofrath,  being  the  elder, 
richer,  and  as  he  fondly  imagined  far  more  practically 
influential  of  the  two,  looked  and  tended  on  his  little 
Sage,  whom  he  seemed  to  consider  as  a  living  oracle. 
Let  but  Teufelsdrockh  open  his  mouth,  Heuschrecke's 


28  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

also  unpuckered  itself  into  a  free  doorway,  beside  his 
being  all  eye  and  all  ear,  so  that  nothing  might  be  lost  : 
and  then,  at  every  pause  in  the  harangue  he  gurgled  out 
his  pursy  chuckle  of  a  cough-laugh  (for  the  machin- 
ery of  laughter  took  some  time  to  get  in  motion,  and 
seemed  crank  and  slack),  or  else  his  twanging  nasal 
Bravo  !  Das  glaub'  ich  •  in  either  case,  by  way  of  heart- 
iest approval.  In  short,  if  Teufelsdrockh  was  Dalai- 
Lama,  of  which,  except  perhaps  in  his  self-seclusion, 
and  god-like  indifference,  there  was  no  symptom,  then 
might  Heuschrecke  pass  for  his  chief  Talapoin,  to  whom 
no  dough-pill  he  could  knead  and  publish  was  other 
than  medicinal  and  sacred. 

In  such  environment,  social,  domestic,  physical,  did 
Teufelsdrockh,  at  the  time  of  our  acquaintance,  and 
most  likely  does  he  still,  live  and  meditate.  Here, 
perched-up  in  his  high  Wahngasse  watch-tower,  and 
often,  in  solitude,  outwatching  the  Bear,  it  was  that  the 
indomitable  Inquirer  fought  all  his  battles  with  Dulness 
and  Darkness ;  here,  in  all  probability,  that  he  wrote 
this  surprising  Volume  on  Clothes.  Additional  particu- 
lars :  of  his  age,  which  was  of  that  standing  middle 
sort  you  could  only  guess  at ;  of  his  wide  surtout ;  the 
color  of  his  trousers,  fashion  of  his  broad-brimmed 
steeple-hat,  and  so  forth,  we  might  report,  but  do  not. 
— The  Wisest  truly  is,  in  these  times,  the  Greatest  ;  so 
that  an  enlightened  curiosity,  leaving  Kings  and  such- 
like to  rest  very  much  on  their  own  basis,  turns  more 
and  more  to  the  Philosophic  Class  :  nevertheless,  what 
reader  expects  that,  with  all  our  writing  and  reporting 
Teufelsdrockh  could  be  brought  home  to  him,  till  once 
the  Documents  arrive  ?  His  Life,  Fortunes,  and  Bodily 
Presence,  are  as  yet  hidden  from  us,  or  matter  only  of 
faint  conjecture.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not  his 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  29 

Soul  lie  enclosed  in  this  remarkable  Volume,  much  more 
truly  than  Pedro  Garcia's  did  in  the  buried  Bag  of 
Doubloons  ?  To  the  soul  of  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  to 
his  opinions,  namely,  on  the  "  Origin  and  Influence  of 
Clothes,"  we  for  the  present  gladly  return. 


30  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

IT  were  a  piece  of  vain  flattery  to  pretend  that  this 
Work  on  Clothes  entirely  contents  us  ;  that  it  is  not, 
like  all  works  of  genius,  like  the  very  Sun,  which, 
though  the  highest  published  creation,  or  work  of  gen- 
ius, has  nevertheless  black  spots  and  troubled  nebulosi- 
ties amid  its  effulgence, — a  mixture  of  in  sight,  inspira- 
tion, with  dulness,  double-vision,  and  even  utter  blind- 
ness. 

Without  committing  ourselves  to  those  enthusiastic 
praises  and  prophesyings  of  the  Weissnichlwd 'sche 
Anzeiger,  we  admitted  that  the  Book  had  in  a  high  de- 
gree excited  us  to  self-activity,  which  is  the  best  effect 
of  any  book  ;  that  it  had  even  operated  changes  in  our 
way  of  thought ;  nay,  that  it  promised  to  prove,  as  it 
were,  the  opening  of  a  new  mine-shaft,  wherein  the 
whole  world  of  Speculation  might  henceforth  dig  to 
unknown  depths.  More  especially  it  may  now  be 
declared  that  Professor  Teufelsdrockh's  acquirements, 
patience  of  research,  philosophic  and  even  poetic  vigor, 
are  here  made  indisputably  manifest ;  and  unhappily  no 
less  his  prolixity  and  tortuosity  and  manifold  inepti- 
tude ;  that,  on  the  whole,  as  in  opening  new  mine-shafts 
is  not  unreasonable,  there  is  much  rubbish  in  his  Book, 
though  likewise  specimens  of  almost  invaluable  ore, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  31 

A  paramount  popularity  in  England  we  cannot  promise 
him.  Apart  from  the  choice  of  such  a  topic  as  Clothes, 
too  often  the  manner  of  treating  it  betokens  in  the 
Author  a  rusticity  and  academic  seclusion,  unblamable, 
indeed  inevitable  in  a  German,  but  fatal  to  his  success 
with  our  public. 

Of  good  society  Teufelsdrockh  appears  to  have  seen 
little,  or  has  mostly  forgotten  what  he  saw.  He  speaks- 
out  with  a  strange  plainness  ;  calls  many  things  by 
their  mere  dictionary  names.  To  him  the  Upholsterer 
is  no  Pontiff,  neither  is  any  Drawing-room  a  Temple, 
were  it  never  so  begilt  and  overhung  :  "a  whole  im- 
mensity of  Brussels  carpets,  and  pier-glasses,  and  or- 
molu," as  he  himself  expresses  it,  "cannot  hide  from 
me  that  such  Drawing-room  is  simply  a  section  of 
Infinite  Space,  where  so  many  God-created  Souls  do 
for  the  time  meet  together."  To  Teufelsdrockh  the 
highest  Duchess  is  respectable,  is  venerable ;  but 
nowise  for  her  pearl  bracelets  and  Malines  laces  ;  in  his 
eyes,  the  star  of  a  Lord  is  little  less  and  little  more 
than  the  broad  button  of  Birmingham  spelter  in  a 
Clown's  smock  ;  ' '  each  is  an  implement, "  he  says,  ' '  in 
its  kind  ;  a  tag  for  hooking-together  ;  and,  for  the  rest, 
was  dug  from  the  earth,  and  hammered  on  a  stithy 
before  smith's  fingers."  Thus  does  the  Professor  look 
in  men's  faces  with  a  strange  impartiality,  a  strange 
scientific  freedom  ;  like  a  man  unversed  in  the  higher 
circles,  like  a  man  dropped  thither  from  the  Moon. 
Rightly  considered,  it  is  in  this  peculiarity,  running 
through  his  whole  system  of  thought,  that  all  these 
short-comings,  over-shootings,  and  multiform  perver- 
sities, take  rise  :  if  indeed  they  have  not  a  second 
source,  also  natural  enough,  in  his  Transcendental 
Philosophies,  and  humor  of  looking  at  all  Matter  and 


32  SARTOR  RES  A  R  TVS. 

Material  things  as  Spirit ;  whereby  truly  his  case  were 
but  the  more  hopeless,  the  more  lamentable. 

To  the  Thinkers  of  this  nation,  however,  of  which 
class  it  is  firmly  believed  there  are  individuals  yet 
extant,  we  can  safely  recommend  the  Work  :  nay,  who 
knows  but  among  the  fashionable  ranks  too,  if  it  be 
true,  as  Teufelsdrockh  maintains,  that  "within  the 
most  starched  cravat  there  passes  a  windpipe  and  wea- 
sand,  and  under  the  thickliest  embroidered  waistcoat 
beats  a  heart," — the  force  of  that  rapt  earnestness  may 
be  felt,  and  here  and  there  an  arrow  of  the  soul  pierce 
through  ?  In  our  wild  Seer,  shaggy,  unkempt,  like  a 
Baptist  living  on  locusts  and  wild  honey,  there  is  an 
untutored  energy,  a  silent,  as  it  were  unconscious, 
strength,  which,  except  in  the  higher  walks  of  Liter- 
ature, must  be  rare.  Many  a  deep  glance,  and  often 
with  unspeakable  precision,  has  he  cast  into  mysterious 
Nature,  and  the  still  more  mysterious  Life  of  Man. 
Wonderful  it  is  with  what  cutting  words,  now  and  then, 
he  severs  asunder  the  confusion  ;  shears  down,  were  it 
furlongs  deep,  into  the  true  center  of  the  matter ;  and 
there  not  only  hits  the  nail  on  the  head,  but  with  crush- 
ing force  smites  it  home,  and  buries  it. — On  the  other 
hand,  let  us  be  free  to  admit,  he  is  the  most  unequal 
writer  breathing.  Often  after  some  such  feat,  he  will 
play  truant  for  long  pages,  and  go  dawdling  and  dream- 
ing, and  mumbling  and  maundering  the  merest  com- 
monplaces, as  if  he  were  asleep  with  eyes  open,  which 
indeed  he  is. 

Of  his  boundless  Learning,  and  how  all  reading  and 
literature  in  most  known  tongues,  from  Sanchoniathon 
to  Dr.  Lingard,  from  your  Oriental  Shasters,  and  Tal- 
muds,  and  Korans,  with  Cassini's  Siamese  Tables,  and 
Laplace's  Mecanique  Celeste,  down  to  Robinson  Crusoe 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  33 

and  the  Belfast  Town  and  Country  Almanack,  are  familiar 
to  him, — we  shall  say  nothing  :  for  unexampled  as  it  is 
with  us,  to  the  Germans  such  universality  of  study 
passes  without  wonder,  as  a  thing  commendable,  in- 
deed, but  natural,  indispensable,  and  there  of  course. 
A  man  that  devotes  his  life  to  learning,  shall  he  not  be 
learned  ? 

In  respect  of  style  our  Author  manifests  the  same 
genial  capability,  marred  too  often  by  the  same  rude- 
ness, inequality,  and  apparent  want  of  intercourse  with 
the  higher  classes.  Occasionally,  as  above  hinted,  we 
find  consummate  vigor,  a  true  inspiration  ;  his  burn- 
ing thoughts  step  forth  in  fit  burning  words,  like  so 
many  full-formed  Minervas,  issuing  amid  flame  and 
splendor  from  Jove's  head ;  a  rich,  idiomatic  diction, 
picturesque  allusions,  fiery  poetic  emphasis,  or  quaint 
tricksy  turns  ;  all  the  graces  and  terrors  of  a  wild  Im- 
agination, wedded  to  the  clearest  Intellect,  alternate 
in  beautiful  vicissitude.  Were  it  not  that  sheer  sleeping 
and  soporific  passages  ;  circumlocutions,  repetitions, 
touches  even  of  pure  doting  jargon,  so  often  intervene  ! 
On  the  whole,  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  is  not  a  culti- 
vated writer.  Of  his  sentences  perhaps  not  more  than 
nine-tenths  stand  straight  on  their  legs  ;  the  remainder 
are  in  quite  angular  attitudes,  buttressed-up  by  props 
(of  parentheses  and  dashes),  and  ever  with  this  or  the 
other  tagrag  hanging  from  them  ;  a  few  even  sprawl- 
out  helplessly  on  all  sides,  quite  broken-backed  and 
dismembered.  Nevertheless,  in  almost  his  very  worst 
moods,  there  lies  in  him  a  singular  attraction.  A  wild 
tone  pervades  the  whole  utterance  of  the  man,  like  its 
keynote  and  regulator ;  now  screwing  itself  aloft  as 
into  the  Song  of  Spirits,  or  else  the  shrill  mockery  of 
Fiends  ;  now  sinking  in  cadenees,  not  without  melo- 
3 


34  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

dious  heartiness,  though  sometimes  abrupt  enough,  in- 
to the  common  pitch,  when  we  hear  it  only  as  a  monot- 
onous hum  ;  of  which  hum  the  true  character  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  fix.  Up  to  this  hour  we  have  never 
fully  satisfied  ourselves  whether  it  is  a  tone  and  hum  of 
real  Humor,  which  we  reckon  among  the  very  highest 
qualities  of  genius,  or  some  echo  of  mere  Insanity  and 
Inanity,  which  doubtless  ranks  below  the  very  lowest. 
Under  a  like  difficulty,  in  spite  even  of  our  personal 
intercourse,  do  we  still  lie  with  regard  to  the  Professor's 
moral  feeling.  Gleams  of  an  ethereal  love  burst  forth 
from  him,  soft  wailings  of  infinite  pity  ;  he  could  clasp 
the  whole  Universe  into  his  bosom,  and  keep  it  warm  ; 
it  seems  as  if  under  that  rude  exterior  there  dwelt  a 
very  seraph.  Then  again  he  is  so  sly  and  still,  so  im- 
perturbably  saturnine  ;  shows  such  indifference,  malign 
coolness  towards  all  that  men  strive  after ;  and  ever 
with  some  half-visible  wrinkle  of  a  bitter  sardonic  humor, 
if  indeed  it  be  not  mere  stolid  callousness, — that  you 
look  on  him  almost  with  a  shudder,  as  on  some  incar- 
nate Mephistopheles,  to  whom  this  great  terrestrial  and 
celestial  Round,  after  all,  were  but  some  huge  foolish 
Whirligig,  where  kings  and  beggars,  and  angels  and 
demons,  and  stars  and  street-sweepings,  were  chaoti- 
cally whirled,  in  which  only  children  could  take  inter- 
est. His  look,  as  we  mentioned,  is  probably  the  grav- 
est ever  seen  :  yet  it  is  not  of  that  cast-iron  gravity 
frequent  enough  among  our  own  Chancery  suitors  ; 
but  rather  the  gravity  as  of  some  silent,  high-encircled 
mountain-pool,  perhaps  the  crater  of  an  extinct  vol- 
cano ;  into  whose  black  deeps  you  fear  to  gaze  :  those 
eyes,  those  lights  that  sparkle  in  it,  may  indeed  be  re- 
flexes of  the  heavenly  Stars,  but  perhaps  also  glances 
from  the  region  of  Nether  Fire  ! 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  35 

Certainly  a  most  involved,  self-secluded,  altogether 
enigmatic  nature,  thisofTeufelsdrockh !  Here,  however, 
we  gladly  recall  to  mind  that  once  we  saw  him  laugh  ; 
once  only,  perhaps  it  was  the  first  and  last  time  in  his 
life  ;  but  then  such  a  peal  of  laughter,  enough  to  have 
awakened  the  Seven  Sleepers  !  It  was  of  Jean  Paul's 
doings  :  some  single  billow  in  that  vast  World-Mahl- 
strom  of  Humor,  with  its  heaven-kissing  coruscations, 
which  is  now,  alas,  all  congealed  in  the  frost  of  death  ! 
The  large-bodied  Poet  and  the  small,  both  large  enough 
in  soul,  sat  talking  miscellaneously  together,  the  pres- 
ent Editor  being  privileged  to  listen  ;  and  now  Paul, 
in  his  serious  way,  was  giving  one  of  those  inimitable 
"Extra-harangues;"  and,  as  it  chanced,  On  the  Pro- 
posal for  a  Cast-metal  King  :  gradually  a  light  kindled 
in  our  Professor's  eyes  and  face,  a  beaming,  mantling, 
loveliest,  light  ;  through  those  murky  features,  a  radi- 
ant, ever-young  Apollo  looked  ;  and  he  burst  forth  like 
the  neighing  of  all  Tattersall's, — tears  streaming  down 
his  cheeks,  pipe  held  aloft,  foot  clutched  into  the  air, — 
loud,  long-continuing,  uncontrollable ;  a  laugh  not  of 
the  face  and  diaphragm  only,  but  of  the  whole  man 
from  head  to  heel.  The  present  Editor,  who  laughed 
indeed,  yet  with  measure,  began  to  fear  all  was  not 
right :  however,  Teufelsdrockh  composed  himself,  and 
sank  into  his  old  stillness  ;  on  his  inscrutable  counte- 
nance there  was,  if  anything,  a  slight  look  of  shame  ; 
and  Richter  himself  could  not  rouse  him  again.  Read- 
ers who  have  any  tincture  of  Psychology  know  how 
much  is  to  be  inferred  from  this  ;  and  that  no  man  who 
has  once  heartily  and  wholly  laughed  can  be  altogether 
irreclaimably  bad.  How  much  lies  in  laughter :  the 
cipher-key,  wherewith  we  decipher  the  whole  man  ! 
Some  men  wear  an  everlasting  barren  simper  ;  in  the 


36  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

smile  of  others  lies  a  cold  glitter  as  of  ice  :  the  fewest 
are  able  to  laugh,  what  can  be  called  laughing,  but 
only  sniff  and  titter  and  snigger  from  the  throat  out- 
wards ;  or  at  best,  produce  some  whiffling  husky  cach- 
innation,  as  if  they  were  laughing  through  wool  :  of 
none  such  comes  good.  The  man  who  cannot  laugh  is 
not  only  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils  ;  but 
his  whole  life  is  already  a  treason  and  a  stratagem. 

Considered  as  an  Author,  Herr  Teufelsdrockh  has 
one  scarcely  pardonable  fault,  doubtless  his  worst : 
an  almost  total  want  of  arrangement.  In  this  remark- 
able Volume,  it  is  true,  his  adherence  to  the  mere 
course  of  Time  produces,  through  the  Narrative  por- 
tions, a  certain  show  of  outward  method ;  but  of  true 
logical  method  and  sequence  there  is  too  little.  Apart 
from  its  multifarious  sections  and  subdivisions,  the 
Work  naturally  falls  into  two  Parts  ;  a  Historical-De- 
scriptive, and  a  Philosophical-Speculative  :  but  falls,  un- 
happily, by  no  firm  line  of  demarcation  ;  in  that  laby- 
rinthic  combination,  each  Part  overlaps,  and  indents, 
and  indeed  runs  quite  through  the  other.  Many  sec- 
tions are  of  a  debatable  rubric,  or  even  quite  nondescript 
and  unnamable ;  whereby  the  Book  not  only  loses  in 
accessibility,  but  too  often  distresses  us  like  some  mad 
banquet,  wherein  all  courses  had  been  confounded, 
and  fish  and  flesh,  soup  and  solid,  oyster-sauce,  lettuces, 
Rhine-wine  and  French  mustard,  were  hurled  into  one 
huge  tureen  or  trough,  and  the  hungry  Public  invited 
to  help  itself.  To  bring  what  order  we  can  out  of  this 
Chaos  shall  be  part  of  our  endeavor. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  37 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  WORLD  IN  CLOTHES. 

"As  Montesquieu  wrote  a  Spirit  of  Laws ,"  observes 
our  Professor,  "so  could  I  write  a  Spirit  of  Clothes  ; 
thus,  with  an  Esprit  des  Lois,  properly  an  Esprit  de 
Coutumes,  we  should  have  an  Esprit  de  Costumes.  For 
neither  in  tailoring-  nor  in  legislating  does  man  proceed 
by  mere  Accident,  but  the  hand  is  ever  guided  on  by 
mysterious  operations  of  the  mind.  In  all  his  Modes, 
and  habilatory  endeavors,  an  Architectural  Idea  will 
be  found  lurking  ;  his  Body  and  the  Cloth  are  the  site 
and  materials  whereon  and  whereby  his  beautiful 
edifice,  of  a  Person,  is  to  be  built.  Whether  he  flow 
gracefully  out  in  folded  mantles,  based  on  light  sandals  ; 
tower-up  in  high  headgear,  from  amid  peaks,  spangles 
and  bell-girdles ;  swell-out  in  starched  ruffs,  buckram 
stuffings,  and  monstrous  tuberosities  ;  or  girth  himself 
into  separate  sections,  and  front  the  world  an  Agglom- 
eration of  four  limbs, — will  depend  on  the  nature  of 
such  Architectural  Idea  :  whether  Grecian,  Gothic, 
Later-Gothic,  or  altogether  Modern,  and  Parisian  or 
Anglo-Dandiacal.  Again,  what  meaning  lies  in  Color  1 
From  the  soberest  drab  to  the  high-flaming  scarlet, 
spiritual  idiosyncrasies  unfold  themselves  in  choice  of 
Color  :  if  the  Cut  betoken  Intellect  and  Talent,  so  does 
the  Color  betoken  Temper  and  Heart.  In  all  which, 
among  nations  as  among  individuals,  there  is  an  in- 


38  SARTOR  R&SARTUS. 

cessant,  indubitable,  though  infinitely  complex  work- 
ing of  Cause  and  Effect :  every  snip  of  the  Scissors  has 
been  regulated  and  prescribed  by  ever-active  Influences, 
which  doubtless  to  Intelligences  of  a  superior  order  are 
neither  invisible  nor  illegible. 

"For  such  superior  Intelligences  a  Cause-and-Effect 
Philosophy  of  Clothes,  as  of  Laws,  were  probably  a 
comfortable  winter-evening  entertainment  :  neverthe- 
less, for  inferior  Intelligences,  like  men,  such  Philoso- 
phies have  always  seemed  to  me  uninstructive  enough. 
Nay,  what  is  your  Montesquieu  himself  but  a  clever 
infant  spelling  Letters  from  a  hieroglyphical  prophetic 
Book,  the  lexicon  of  which  lies  in  Eternity,  in  Heaven  ? — 
Let  any  Cause-and-Effect  Philosopher  explain,  not  why 
I  wear  such  and  such  a  Garment,  obey  such  and  such  a 
Law  ;  but  even  why  /am  here,  to  wear  and  obey  any- 
thing !  — Much,  therefore,  if  not  the  whole,  of  that  same 
Spirit  of  Clothes  I  shall  suppress,  as  hypothetical,  inef- 
fectual, and  even  impertinent  :  naked  Facts,  and  De- 
ductions drawn  therefrom  in  quite  another  than  that 
omniscient  style,  are  my  humbler  and  proper  province." 

Acting  on  which  prudent  restriction,  Teufelsdrockh 
has  nevertheless  contrived  to  take-in  a  well-nigh  bound- 
less extent  of  field ;  at  least,  the  boundaries  too  often 
lie  quite  beyond  our  horizon.  Selection  being  indis- 
pensable, we  shall  here  glance-over  his  First  Part  only 
in  the  most  cursory  manner.  This  First  Part  is  no 
doubt,  distinguished  by  omnivorous  learning,  and 
utmost  patience  and  fairness  :  at  the  same  time,  in  its 
results  and  delineations,  it  is  much  more  likely  to  in- 
terest the  Compilers  of  some  Library  of  General,  En- 
tertaining, Useful,  or  even  Useless  Knowledge  than  the 
miscellaneous  readers  of  these  pages.  Was  it  this 
Part  of  the  Book  which  Heuschrecke  had  in  view, 


RESARTUS.  39 

when  he  recommended  us  to  that  joint-stock  vehicle 
of  publication,  "  at  present  the  glory  of  British  Liter- 
ature "  ?  If  so,  the  Library  Editors  are  welcome  to 
dig  in  it  for  their  own  behoof. 

To  the  First  Chapter,  which  turns  on  Paradise  and 
Fig-leaves,  and  leads  us  into  interminable  disquisitions 
of  a  mythological,  metaphorical,  cabalistico-sartorial 
and  quite  antediluvian  cast,  we  shall  content  ourselves 
with  giving  an  unconcerned  approval.  Still  less  have 
we  to  do  with  "Lilis,  Adam's  first  wife,  whom,  accord- 
ing to  the  Talmudists,  he  had  before  Eve,  and  who  bore 
him,  in  that  wedlock,  the  whole  progeny  of  aerial, 
aquatic,  and  terrestrial  Devils," — very  needlessly,  we 
think.  On  this  portion  of  the  Work,  with  its  profound 
glances  into  the  Adam-Kadmon,  or  primeval  Element, 
here  strangely  brought  into  relation  with  the  Nifl  and 
Muspel,  (Darkness  and  Light)  of  the  antique  North,  it 
may  be  enough  to  say,  that  its  correctness  of  deduc- 
tion, and  depth  of  Talmudic  and  Rabbinical  lore  have 
filled  perhaps  not  the  worst  Hebraist  in  Britain  with 
something  like  astonishment. 

But,  quitting  this  twilight  region,  Teufelsdrockh 
hastens  from  the  Tower  of  Babel,  to  follow  the  disper- 
sion of  Mankind  over  the  whole  habitable  and  habil- 
able  globe.  Walking  by  the  light  of  Oriental,  Pelasgic, 
Scandinavian,  Egyptian,  Otaheitean,  Ancient  and  Mod- 
ern researches  of  every  conceivable  kind,  he  strives  to 
give  us  in  compressed  shape  (as  the  Niirnbergers  give 
an  Orbis  Pictus)  an  Orbis  Vestitus ;  or  view  of  the  cus- 
toms of  all  mankind,  in  all  countries  in  all  times.  It 
is  here  that  to  the  Antiquarian,  to  the  Historian,  we  can 
triumphantly  say  :  Fall  to  !  Here  is  learning  :  an  irreg- 
ular Treasury,  if  you  will ;  but  inexhaustible  as  the 
Hoard  of  King  Nibelung,  which  twelve  wagons  in  twelve 


40  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

days,  at  the  rate  of  three  journeys  a  day,  could  not  carry 
off.  Sheepskin  cloaks  and  wampum  belts  ;  phylacteries, 
stoles,  albs  ;  chlamydes,  togas,  Chinese  silks.  Afghan 
shawls,  trunk-hose,  leather  breeches,  Celtic  philibegs 
(though  breeches,  as  the  name  Gallia  Braccata  indicates, 
are  the  more  ancient),  Hussar  cloaks,  Vandyke  tippets, 
ruffs,  fardingales,  are  brought  vividly  before  us, — even 
the  Kilmarnock  nightcap  is  not  forgotten.  For  most 
part,  too,  we  must  admit  that  the  Learning,  hetero- 
geneous as  it  is,  and  tumbled-down  quite  pellmell,  is 
true  concentrated  and  purified  Learning,  the  drossy 
parts  smelted  out  and  thrown  aside. 

Philosophical  reflections  intervene,  and  sometimes 
touching  pictures  of  human  life.  Of  this  sort  the  fol- 
lowing has  surprised  us.  The  first  purpose  of  Clothes, 
as  our  Professor  imagines,  was  not  warmth  or  decency, 
but  ornament.  "Miserable  indeed,"  says  he,  "was 
the  condition  of  the  Aboriginal  Savage,  glaring  fiercely 
from  under  his  fleece  of  hair,  which  with  the  beard 
reached  down  to  his  loins,  and  hung  round  him  like  a 
matted  cloak  ;  the  rest  of  his  body  sheeted  in  its  thick 
natural  fell.  He  loitered  in  the  sunny  glades  of  the 
forest,  living  on  wild-fruits ;  or,  as  the  ancient  Cale- 
donian, squatted  himself  in  morasses,  lurking  for  his 
bestial  or  human  prey  ;  without  implements,  without 
arms,  save  the  ball  of  heavy  Flint,  to  which,  that  his 
sole  possession  and  defence  might  not  be  lost,  he  had 
attached  a  long  cord  of  plaited  thongs  ;  thereby  recov- 
ering as  well  as  hurling  it  with  deadly  unerring  skill. 
Nevertheless,  the  pains  of  Hunger  and  Revenge  once 
satisfied,  his  next  care  was  not  Comfort  but  Decoration 
(Putz).  Warmth  he  found  in  the  toils  of  the  chase ;  or 
amid  dried  leaves,  in  his  hollow  tree,  in  his  bark  shed, 
or  natural  grotto  :  but  for  Decoration  he  must  have 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  41 

Clothes.  Nay,  among  wild  people,  we  find  tattooing 
and  painting  even  prior  to  Clothes.  The  first  spirit- 
ual want  of  a  barbarous  man  is  Decoration,  as  indeed 
we  still  see  among  the  barbarous  classes  in  civilized 
countries. 

"Reader,  the  heaven-inspired  melodious  Singer; 
loftiest  Serene  Highness  ;  nay  thy  own  amber-locked, 
snow-and  rose-bloom  Maiden,  worthy  to  glide  sylph- 
like  almost  on  air,  whom-  thou  lovest,  worshippest  as 
a  divine  Presence,  which,  indeed,  symbolically  taken, 
she  is,— has  descended,  like  thyself,  from  that  same  hair- 
mantled,  flint-hurling  Aboriginal  Anthropophagous  ! 
Out  of  the  eater  cometh  forth  meat ;  out  of  the  strong 
cometh  forth  sweetness.  What  changes  are  wrought, 
not  by  Time,  yet  in  Time  !  For  not  Mankind  only,  but 
all  that  Mankind  does  or  beholds,  is  in  continual  growth, 
regenesis  and  self-perfecting  vitality.  Cast  forth  thy 
Act,  thy  Word,  into  the  ever-living,  ever-working  Uni- 
verse :  it  is  a  seed-grain  that  cannot  die  ;  unnoticed  to- 
day (says  one),  it  will  be  found  flourishing  as  a  Ban- 
yan grove  (perhaps,  alas,  as  a  Hemlock- forest  !)  after 
a  thousand  years. 

"He  who  first  shortened  the  labor  of  Copyists  by 
device  of  Movable  Types  was  disbanding  hired  Armies, 
and  cashiering  most  Kings  and  Senates,  and  creating 
a  whole  new  Democratic  world  :  he  had  invented  the 
Art  of  Printing.  The  first  ground  handful  of  Nitre, 
Sulphur,  and  Charcoal  drove  Monk  Schwartz's  pestle 
through  the  ceiling  :  what  will  the  last  do  ?  Achieve 
the  final  undisputed  prostration  of  Force  under  Thought, 
of  Animal  courage  under  Spiritual.  A  simple  invention 
it  was  in  the  old-world  Grazier, — sick  of  lugging  his 
slow  Ox  about  the  country  till  he  got  it  bartered  for 
corn  or  oil,— to  take  a  piece  of  Leather,  and  thereon 


42  SAKTOX  KESAKTUS. 

scratch  or  stamp  the  mere  Figure  of  an  Ox  (or  Pecus)  ; 
put  it  in  his  pocket,  and  call  \iPecunia,  Money.  Yet 
hereby  did  Barter  grow  Sale,  the  Leather  Money  is  now 
Golden  and  Paper,  and  all  miracles  have  been  out-mir- 
acled  :  for  there  are  Rothschilds  and  English  National 
Debts ;  and  whoso  has  sixpence  is  sovereign  (to  the 
length  of  sixpence)  over  all  men ;  commands  cooks  to 
feed  him,  philosophers  to  teach  him,  kings  to  mount 
guard  over  him, — to  the  length  of  sixpence. — Clothes 
too,  which  began  in  foolishest  love  of  Ornament,  what 
have  they  not  become  !  Increased  security  and  pleas- 
urable Heat  soon  followed  :  but  what  of  these  ?  Shame, 
divine  Shame  (Scham,  Modesty),  as  yet  a  stranger  to 
the  Anthropophagous  bosom,  arose  there  mysteriously 
under  Clothes ;  a  mystic  grove-encircled  shrine  for  the 
Holy  in  man.  Clothes  gave  us  individuality,  distinc- 
tions, social  polity ;  Clothes  have  made  Men  of  us ; 
they  are  threatening  to  make  Clothes-screens  of  us. 

"But,  on  the  whole,"  continues  our  eloquent  Pro- 
fessor, "Man  is  a  tool-using  Animal  (Handthierendes 
Thier).  Weak  in  himself,  and  of  small  stature,  he 
stands  on  a  basis,  at  most  for  the  flattest-soled,  of  some 
half-square  foot,  insecurely  enough  ;  has  to  straddle 
out  his  legs,  lest  the  very  wind  supplant  him.  Feeblest 
of  bipeds  !  Three  quintals  are  a  crushing  load  for  him  ; 
the  steer  of  the  meadow  tosses  him  aloft,  like  a  waste 
rag.  Nevertheless  he  can  use  Tools,  can  devise  Tools  : 
with  these  the  granite  mountain  melts  into  light  dust 
before  him  ;  he  kneads  glowing  iron,  as  if  it  were  soft 
paste ;  seas  are  his  smooth  highway,  winds  and  fire 
his  unwearying  steeds.  Nowhere  do  you  find  him 
without  Tools ;  without  Tools  he  is  nothing,  with 
Tools  he  is  all." 

Here  may  we  not,  for  a  moment,  interrupt  the  stream 


S  A  ft  TO  A  tiESAXTUS.  43 

of  Oratory  with  a  remark,  that  this  Definition  of  the 
Tool-using  Animal  appears  to  us,  of  all  that  Animal-sort, 
considerably  the  precisest  and  best  ?  Man  is  called  a 
Laughing  Animal  :  but  do  not  the  apes  also  laugh,  or 
attempt  to  do  it ;  and  is  the  manliest  man  the  greatest 
and  oftenest  laugher.  Teufelsdrockh  himself,  as  we  said, 
laughed  only  once.  Still  less  do  we  make  of  that  other 
French  Definition  of  the  Cooking  Animal  ;•  which,  in- 
deed, for  rigorous  scientific  purposes,  is  as  good  as 
useless.  Can  a  Tartar  be  said  to  cook,  when  he  only 
readies  his  steak  by  riding  on  it  ?  Again,  what  Cookery 
does  the  Greenlander  use,  beyond  stowing-up  his  whale- 
blubber,  as  a  marmot,  in  the  like  case,  might  do  ?  Or 
how  would  Monsieur  Ude  prosper  among  those  Orin- 
occo  Indians  who,  according  to  Humboldt,  lodge  in 
crow-nests,  on  the  branches  of  trees  ;  and,  for  half  the 
year,  have  no  victuals  but  pipe-clay,  the  whole  country 
being  under  water  ?  But,  on  the  other  hand,  show  us  the 
human  being  of  any  period  or  climate,  without  his  Tools  : 
those  very  Caledonians,  as  we  saw,  had  their  Flint-ball 
and  Thong  to  it,  such  as  no  brute  has  or  can  have. 

"  Man  is  a  Tool-using  Animal,"  concludes  Teufels- 
drockh in  his  abrupt  way  ;  "  of  which  truth  Clothes  are 
but  one  example  :  and  surely  if  we  consider  the  inter- 
val between  the  first  wooden  Dibble  fashioned  by  man, 
and  those  Liverpool  Steam-carriages,  or  the  British 
House  of  Commons,  we  shall  note  what  progress  he 
has  made.  He  digs  up  certain  black  stones  from  the 
bosom  of  the  earth,  and  says  to  them,  Transport  me 
and  this  luggage  at  the  rate  of  five-and-thirty  miles  an 
hour ;  and  they  do  it  :  he  collects,  apparently  by  lot, 
six-hundred  and  fifty-eight  miscellaneous  individuals, 
and  says  to  them,  Make  this  nation  toil  for  us,  bleed  for 
us,  hunger  and  sorrow  and  sin  for  us  ;  and  they  do  it." 


44  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

APRONS. 

ONE  of  the  most  unsatisfactory  Sections  in  the  whole 
Volume  is  that  on  Aprons.  What  though  stout  old 
Gao,  the  Persian  Blacksmith,  "  whose  Apron,  now 
indeed  hidden  under  jewels,  because  raised  in  revolt 
which  proved  successful,  is  still  the  royal  standard  of 
that  country  ;  "  what  though  John  Knox's  Daughter, 
who  threatened  Sovereign  Majesty  that  she  would  catch 
her  husband's  head  in  her  Apron,  rather  than  he  should 
lie  and  be  a  bishop  ;  "  what  though  the  Landgravene 
Elizabeth,  with  many  other  Apron  worthies, — figure 
here  ?  An  idle  wire-drawing  spirit,  sometimes  even  a 
tone  of  levity,  approaching  to  conventional  satire,  is  too 
clearly  discernible.  What,  for  example,  are  we  to  make 
of  such  sentences  as  the  following  ? 

"  Aprons  are  Defences  ;  against  injury  to  cleanliness, 
to  safety,  to  modesty,  sometimes  to  roguery.  From  the 
thin  slip  of  notched  silk  (as  it  were,  the  emblem  and 
beatified  ghost  of  an  Apron),  which  some  highest-bred 
housewife,  sitting  at  Niirnberg  Work-boxes  and  Toy- 
boxes,  has  gracefully  fastened  on  ;  to  the  thick-tanned 
hide,  girt  round  him  with  thongs,  wherein  the  Builder 
builds,  and  at  evening  sticks  his  trowel ;  or  to  those  jing- 
ling sheet-iron  Aprons,  wherein  your  otherwise  half- 
naked  Vulcans  hammer  and  smelt  in  their  smelt-furnace, 
— is  there  not  range  enough  in  the  fashion  and  uses  of 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  45 

this  Vestment?  How  much  has  been  concealed,  how 
much  has  been  defended  in  Aprons  !  Nay,  rightfully 
considered,  what  is  your  whole  Military  and  Police  Es- 
tablishment, charged  atuncalculated  millions,  but  a  huge 
scarlet-colored,  iron-fastened  Apron,  wherein  Society 
works  (uneasily  enough)  ;  guarding  itself  from  some 
soil  and  stithy-sparks,  in  this  Devil's-smithy  (Teufels- 
schmiede)  of  a  world  ?  But  of  all  Aprons  the  most  puz- 
zling to  me  hitherto  has  been  the  Episcopal  or  Cassock. 
Wherein  consists  the  usefulness  of  this  Apron  ?  The 
Overseer  (Episcopus]  of  Souls,  I  notice,  has  tucked-in 
the  corner  of  it,  as  if  his  day's  work  were  done  :  what 
does  he  shadow  forth  thereby  ?  "  etc. ,  etc. 

Or  again,  has  it  often  been  the  lot  of  our  readers  to 
read  such  stuff  as  we  shall  now  quote  ? 

"I  consider  those  printed  Paper  Aprons,  worn  by 
the  Parisian  Cooks,  as  a  new  vent,  though  a  slight  one, 
for  Typography  ;  therefore  as  an  encouragement  to 
modern  Literature,  and  deserving  of  approval  :  nor  is 
it  without  satisfaction  that  I  hear  of  a  celebrated  Lon- 
don Firm  having  in  view  to  introduce  the  same  fashion, 
with  important  extensions,  in  England. " — We  who  are 
on  the  spot  hear  of  no  such  thing  ;  and  indeed  have 
reason  to  be  thankful  that  hitherto  there  are  other  vents 
for  our  Literature,  exuberant  as  it  is. —  Teufelsdrockh 
continues  :  "If  such  supply  of  printed  Paper  should 
rise  so  far  as  to  choke-up  the  highways  and  public 
thoroughfares,  new  means  must  of  necessity  be  had  re- 
course to.  In  a  world  existing  by  Industry,  we  grudge 
to  employ  fire  as  a  destroying  element,  and  not  'as  a 
creating  one.  However,  Heaven  is  omnipotent,  and 
will  find  us  an  outlet.  In  the  meanwhile,  is  it  not 
beautiful  to  see  five-million  quintals  of  Rags  picked 
annually  from  the  Laystall ;  and  annually,  after  being 


46  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

macerated,  hot-pressed,  printed-on,  and  sold, — returned 
thither ;  filling  so  many  hungry  mouths  by  the  way  ? 
Thus  is  the  Laystall,  especially  with  its  Rags  or  Clothes- 
rubbish,  the  grand  Electric  Battery,  and  Fountain-of- 
motion,  from  which  and  to  which  the  Social  Activities 
(like  vitreous  and  resinous  Electricities)  circulate,  in 
larger  or  smaller  circles,  through  the  mighty,  billowy, 
storm-tost  Chaos  of  Life,  which  they  keep  alive  !  " — 
Such  passages  fill  us,  who  love  the  man,  and  partly 
esteem  him;  with  a  very  mixed  feeling. 

Farther  down  we  meet  with  this:  "The  Journalists 
are  now  the  true  Kings  and  Clergy  :  henceforth  His- 
torians, unless  they  are  fools,  must  write  not  of  Bour- 
bon Dynasties,  and  Tudors  and  Hapsburgs ;  but  of 
Stamped  Broad-sheet  Dynasties,  and  quite  new  succes- 
sive Names,  according  as  this  or  the  other  Able  Editor, 
or  Combination  of  Able  Editors,  gains  the  world's  ear. 
Of  the  British  Newspaper  Press,  perhaps  the  most  im- 
.portant  of  all,  and  wonderful  enough  in  its  secret  con- 
stitution and  procedure,  a  valuable  descriptive  History 
already  exists,  in  that  language,  under  the  title  of  Satarfs 
Invisible  World  Displayed  ;  which,  however,  by  search 
in  all  the  Weissnichtwo  Libraries,  I  have  not  yet  suc- 
ceeded in  procuring  (vermochle  nicht  aufzutreibeii)." 

Thus  does  the  good  Homer  not  only  nod,  but  snore. 
Thus  does  Teufelsdrockh,  wandering  in  regions  where 
he  had  little  business,  confound  the  old  authentic  Pres- 
byterian Witchfinder  with  a  new,  spurious,  imaginary 
Historian  of  the  Britische  Journalistik  ;  and  so  stumble 
on  perhaps  the  most  egregious  blunder  in  Modern 
Literature ! 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  47 


CHAPTER  VII. 

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 

HAPPIER  is  our  Professor,  and  more  purely  scientific 
and  historic,  when  he  reaches  the  Middle  Ages  in 
Europe,  and  down  to  the  end  of  the  Seventeenth  Century ; 
the  true  era  of  extravagance  in  Costume.  It  is  here 
that  the  Antiquary  and  Student  of  Modes  comes  upon 
his  richest  harvest.  Fantastic  garbs,  beggaring  all 
fancy  of  a  Teniers  or  a  Callot,  succeed  each  other,  like 
monster  devouring  monster  in  a  Dream.  The  whole 
too  in  brief  authentic  strokes,  and  touched  not  seldom 
with  that  breath  of  genius  which  makes  even  old  rai- 
ment live.  Indeed,  so  learned,  precise,  graphical,  and 
everyway  interesting  have  we  found  these  Chapters, 
that  it  may  be  thrown-out  as  a  pertinent  question  for 
parties  concerned.  Whether  or  not  a  good  English 
Translation  thereof  might  henceforth  be  profitably  in- 
corporated with  Mr.  Merrick's  valuable  Work  On  An- 
cient Armor  ?  Take,  by  way  of  example,  the  following 
sketch  ;  as  authority  for  which  Paulinus's  Zeitkiirzende 
Lust  (ii.  678)  is,  with  seeming  confidence,  referred 
to  : 

"  Did  we  behold  the  German  fashionable  dress  of 
the  Fifteenth  Century,  we  might  smile  ;  as  perhaps 
those  bygone  Germans,  were  they  to  rise  again,  and 
see  our  haberdashery,  would  cross  themselves,  and 


48  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

invoke  the  Virgin.  But  happily  no  bygone  German,  or 
man,  rises  again  ;  thus  the  Present  is  not  needlessly 
trammelled  with  the  Past ;  and  only  grows  out  of  it, 
like  a  Tree,  whose  roots  are  not  intertangled  with  its 
branches,  but  lie  peaceably  underground.  Nay  it  is 
very  mournful,  yet  not  useless,  to  see  and  know,  how 
the  Greatest  and  Dearest,  in  a  short  while,  would  find 
his  place  quite  filled-up  here,  and  no  room  for  him  ; 
the  very  Napoleon,  the  very  Byron,  in  some  seven 
years,  has  become  obsolete,  and  were  now  a  foreigner 
to  his  Europe.  Thus  is  the  Law  of  Progress  secured  ; 
and  in  Clothes,  as  in  all  other  external  things  whatso- 
ever, no  fashion  will  continue. 

"  Of  the  military  classes  in  those  old  times,  whose 
buff-belts,  complicated  chains  and  gorgets,  huge  churn- 
boots,  and  other  riding  and  fighting  gear  have  been 
bepainted  in  modern  Romance,  till  the  whole  has 
acquired  somewhat  of  a  sign-post  character, — I  shall 
here  say  nothing  :  the  civil  and  pacific  classes,  less 
touched  upon,  are  wonderful  enough  for  us. 

"  Rich  men,  I  find,  have  Teusinke  "  (a  perhaps  un- 
translatable article)  ;  ' '  also  a  silver  girdle,  whereat 
hang  little  bells  ;  so  that  when  a  man  walks,  it  is  with 
continual  jingling.  Some  few,  of  musical  turn,  have 
a  whole  chime  of  bells  (Glockenspiel]  fastened  there ; 
which,  especially  in  sudden  whirls,  and  the  other  ac- 
cidents of  walking,  has  a  grateful  effect.  Observe  too 
how  fond  they  are  of  peaks,  and  Gothic-arch  intersec- 
tions. The  male  world  wears  peaked  caps,  an  ell  long, 
which  hang  bobbing  over  the  side  (s chief)  :  their  shoes 
are  peaked  in  front,  also  to  the  length  of  an  ell,  and 
laced  on  the  side  with  tags ;  even  the  wooden  shoes 
have  their  ell-long  noses  :  some  also  clap  bells  on  the 
peak.  Further,  according  to  my  authority,  the  men 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  49 

have  breeches  without  seat  (ohne  Gesass):  these  they 
fasten  peak  wise  to  their  shirts ;  and  the  long  round 
doublet  must  overlap  them. 

"Rich  maidens,  again,  flit  abroad  in  gowns  scal- 
loped out  behind  and  before,  so  that  back  and  breast 
are  almost  bare.  Wives  of  quality,  on  the  other  hand, 
have  train-gowns  four  or  five  ells  in  length  ;  which 
trains  there  are  boys  to  carry.  Brave  Cleopatras, 
sailing  in  their  silk-cloth  Galley,  with  a  Cupid  for 
steersman  !  Consider  their  welts,  a  handbreadth  thick, 
which  waver  round  them  by  way  of  hem  ;  the  long 
flood  of  silver  buttons,  or  rather  silver  shells,  from 
throat  to  shoe,  wherewith  these  same  welt-gowns  are 
buttoned.  The  maidens  have  bound  silver  snoods 
about  their  hair,  with  gold  spangles,  and  pendant 
flames  (Flammeri),  that  is,  sparkling  hair-drops  :  but 
of  their  mother's  headgear  who  shall  speak  ?  Neither 
in  love  of  grace  is  comfort  forgotten.  In  winter  weather 
you  behold  the  whole  fair  creation  (that  can  afford  it) 
in  long  mantles,  with  skirts  wide  below,  and,  for  hem, 
not  one  but  two  sufficient  handbroad  welts  ;  all  ending 
atop  in  a  thick  well-starched  Ruff,  some  twenty  inches 
broad  :  these  are  their  Ruff-mantles  (Krag  en-mantel). 

"As  yet  among  the  womankind  hoop-petticoats  are 
not ;  but  the  men  have  doublets  of  fustian,  under 
which  lie  multiple  ruffs  of  cloth,  pasted  together  with 
batter  (mil  Teig  zusammengekleisterf),  which  create  pro- 
tuberance enough.  Thus  do  the  two  sexes  vie  with 
each  other  in  the  art  of  Decoration ;  and  as  usual  the 
stronger  carries  it." 

Our  Professor,  whether  he  have  humor  himself  or 

not ;  manifests  a   certain   feeling  of  the  Ludicrous,   a 

sly  observance  of  it,  which,  could  emotion  of  any  kind 

be  confidently  predicated  of  so  still  a  man,  we  might 

4 


50  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

call  a  real  love.  None  of  those  bell-girdles,  bushel- 
breeches,  cornuted  shoes,  or  other  the  like  phenomena, 
of  which  the  History  of  Dress  offers  so  many,  escape 
him  :  more  especially  the  mischances,  or  striking  ad- 
ventures, incident  to  the  wearers  of  such,  are  noticed 
with  due  fidelity.  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  fine  mantle, 
which  he  spread  in  the  mud  under  Queen  Elizabeth's 
feet,  appears  to  provoke  little  enthusiasm  in  him  ;  he 
merely  asks,  Whether  at  that  period  the  Maiden  Queen 
"  was  red-painted  on  the  nose,  and  white-painted  on 
the  cheeks,  as  her  tirewomen,  when  from  spleen  and 
wrinkles  she  would  no  longer  look  in  any  glass,  were 
wont  to  serve  her  ? "  We  can  answer  that  Sir  Walter 
knew  well  what  he  was  doing,  and  had  the  Maiden 
Queen  been  stuffed  parchment  dyed  in  verdigris,  would 
have  done  the  same. 

Thus  too,  treating  of  those  enormous  habiliments, 
that  were  not  only  slashed  and  gallooned,  but  artifi- 
cially swollen-out  on  the  broader  parts  of  the  body,  by 
introduction  of  Bran, — our  Professor  fails  not  to  com- 
ment on  that  luckless  Courtier,  who  having  seated  him- 
self on  a  chair  with  some  projecting  nail  on  it,  and 
therefrom  rising,  to  pay  his  devoir  on  the  entrance  of 
Majesty,  instantaneously  emitted  several  pecks  of  dry 
wheat-dust  .\and  stood  there  diminished  to  a  spindle, 
his  galloons  and  slashes  dangling  sorrowful  and  flabby 
round  him.  Whereupon  the  Professor  publishes  this 
reflection  : 

"  By  what  strange  chances  do  we  live  in  History  ? 
Erostratus  by  a  torch  ;  Milo  by  a  bullock ;  Henry 
Darnley,  an  unfledged  booby  and  bustard,  by  his  limbs  ; 
most  Kings  and  Queens  by  being  born  under  such  and 
such  a  bed-tester  ;  Boileau  Despreaux  (according  to 
Helvetius)  by  the  peck  of  a  turkey  ;  and  this  ill-starred 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  51 

individual  by  a  rent  in  his  breeches, — for  no  Memoirist 
of  Kaiser  Otto's  Court  omits  him.  Vain  was  the  prayer 
of  Themistocles  for  a  talent  of  Forgetting  :  my  Friends, 
yield  cheerfully  to  Destiny,  and  read  since  it  is  written." 
— Has  Teufelsdrockh  to  be  put  in  mind  that,  nearly  re- 
lated to  the  impossible  talent  of  Forgetting,  stands  that 
talent  of  Silence,  which  even  travelling  Englishmen 
manifest  ? 

"The  simplest  costume,"  observes  our  Professor, 
"which  I  anywhere  find  alluded  to  in  History,  is  that 
used  as  regimental,  by  Bolivar's  Cavalry,  in  the  late 
Columbian  wars.  A  square  Blanket,  twelve  feet  in  diag- 
onal, is  provided  (some  were  wont  to  cut-off  the  cor- 
ners, and  make  it  circular) :  in  the  centre  a  slit  is  ef- 
fected eighteen  inches  long ;  through  this  the  mother- 
naked  Trooper  introduces  his  head  and  neck ;  and  so 
rides  shielded  from  all  weather,  and  in  battle  from 
many  strokes  (for  he  rolls  it  about  his  left  arm)  ;  and 
not  only  dressed,  but  harnessed  and  draperied." 

With  which  picture  of  a  State  of  Nature,  affecting  by 
its  singularity,  and  Old-Roman  contempt  of  the  super- 
fluous, we  shall  quit  this  part  of  our  subject 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  WORLD  OUT  OF  CLOTHES. 

IF  in  the  Descriptive-Historical  portion  of  this  Volume, 
Teufelsdrockh,  discussing  merely  the  Werden  (Origin 
and  successive  Improvement)  of  Clothes,  has  astonished 
many  a  reader,  much  more  will  he  in  the  Speculative- 
Philosophical  portion,  which  treats  of  their  Wirken  or 
Influences.  It  is  here  that  the  present  Editor  first  feels 
the  pressure  of  his  task  ;  for  here  properly  the  higher 
and  new  Philosophy  of  Clothes  commences  :  an  untried 
almost  inconceivable  region,  or  chaos  ;  in  venturing 
upon  which,  how  difficult,  yet  how  unspeakably  impor- 
tant, is  it  to  know  what  course,  of  survey  and  conquest, 
is  the  true  one  ;  where  the  footing  is  firm  substance 
and  will  bear  us,  where  it  is  hollow,  or  mere  cloud,  and 
may  ingulf  us  !  Teufelsdrockh  undertakes  no  less  than 
to  expound  the  moral,  political,  even  religious  Influences 
of  Clothes  ;  he  undertakes  to  make  manifest,  in  its 
thousandfold  bearings  this  grand  Proposition,  that  Man's 
earthly  interests  "  are  all  hooked  and  buttoned  together, 
and  held  up,  by  Clothes."  He  says  in  so  many  words, 
"  Society  is  founded  upon  Cloth ; "  and  again, 
"Society  sails  through  the  Infinitude  on  Cloth,  as  on  a 
Faust's  Mantle,  or  rather  like  the  Sheet  of  clean  and 
unclean  beasts  in  the  Apostle's  Dream  ;  and  without 
such  Sheet  or  Mantle,  would  sink  to  endless  depths, 
or  mount  to  inane  limboes,  and  in  either  case  be  no 
more," 


SARTOK  ££SARTU$.  53 

By  what  chains,  or  indeed  infinitely  complected 
tissues,  of  Meditation  this  grand  Theorem  is  here  un- 
folded, and  innumerable  practical  Corollaries  are  drawn 
therefrom,  it  were  perhaps  a  mad  ambition  to  attempt 
exhibiting.  Our  Professor's  method  is  not,  in  any  case, 
that  of  common  school  Logic,  where  the  truths  all 
stand  in  a  row,  each  holding  by  the  skirts  of  the  other  ; 
but  at  best  that  of  practical  Reason,  proceeding  by 
large  Intuition  over  whole  systematic  groups  and  king- 
doms ;  whereby,  we  might  say,  a  noble  complexity, 
almost  like  that  of  Nature,  reigns  in  his  Philosophy,  or 
spiritual  Picture  of  Nature  :  a  mighty  maze,  yet,  as 
faith  whispers,  not  without  a  plan.  Nay  we  complained 
above,  that  a  certain  ignoble  complexity,  what  we  must 
call  mere  confusion,  was  also  discernible.  Often,  also, 
we  have  to  exclaim  :  Would  to  Heaven  those  same 
Biographical  Documents  were  come  !  For  it  seems  as 
if  the  demonstration  lay  much  in  the  Author's  individu- 
ality ;  as  if  it  were  not  Argument  that  had  taught  him, 
but  Experience.  At  present  it  is  only  in  local  glimpses, 
and  by  significant  fragments,  picked  often  at  wide- 
enough  intervals  from  the  original  Volume,  and  care- 
fully collated,  that  we  can  hope  to  impart  some  outline 
or  foreshadow  of  this  Doctrine.  Readers  of  any  intelli- 
gence are  once  more  invited  to  favor  us  with  their  most 
concentrated  attention  :  let  these,  after  intense  consid- 
eration, and  not  till  then,  pronounce,  Whether  on  the 
utmost  verge  of  our  actual  horizon  there  is  not  a  loom- 
ing as  of  Land ;  a  promise  of  new  Fortunate  Islands, 
perhaps  whole  undiscovered  Americas,  for  such  as  have 
canvas  to  sail  thither  ? — As  exordium  to  the  whole, 
stand  here  the  following  long  citation  : 

"With  men  of  a  speculative  turn,"  writes  Teufels- 
drockh,  "there  come  seasons,  meditative,  sweet,  yet 


54  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

awful  hours,  when  in  wonder  and  fear  you  ask  yourself 
that  unanswerable  question  :  Who  am  //  the  thing 
that  can  say  ' '  I  "  (das  Wesen  das  sich  ICH  nennt]  ? 
The  world,  with  its  loud  trafficking,  retires  into  the  dis- 
tance ;  and,  through  the  paper-hangings,  and  stone- 
walls, and  thick-plied  tissues  of  Commerce  and  Polity, 
and  all  the  living  and  lifeless  integuments  (of  Society 
and  a  Body),  wherewith  your  Existence  sits  surrounded, 
— the  sight  reaches  forth  into  the  void  Deep,  and  you 
are  alone  with  the  Universe,  and  silently  commune 
with  it,  as  one  mysterious  Presence  with  another. 

"  Who  am  I ;  what  is  this  ME  ?  A  Voice,  a  Motion, 
an  Appearance; — some  embodied,  visualized  Idea  in 
the  Eternal  Mind  ?  Cogito,  ergo  sum.  Alas,  poor  Cogi- 
tator,  this  takes  us  but  a  little  way.  Sure  enough,  I  am  ; 
and  lately  was  not  :  but  Whence  ?  How  ?  Whereto  ? 
The  answer  lies  around,  written  in  all  colors  and  motions, 
uttered  in  all  tones  of  jubilee  and  wail,  in  thousand- 
figured,  thousand-voiced,  harmonious  Nature  :  but 
where  is  the  cunning  eye  and  ear  to  whom  that  God- 
written  Apocalypse  will  yield  articulate  meaning  ?  We 
sit  as  in  a  boundless  Phantasmagoria  and  Dream-grotto  ; 
boundless,  for  the  faintest  star,  the  remotest  century, 
lies  n^t  even  nearer  the  verge  thereof:  sounds  and 
many-colored  visions  flit  round  our  sense ;  but  Him,  the 
Unslumbering,  whose  work  both  Dream  and  Dreamer 
are,  we  see  not ;  except  in  rare  half-waking  moments, 
suspect  not.  Creation,  says  one,  lies  before  us,  like  a 
glorious  Rainbow  ;  but  the  Sun  that  made  it  lies  behind 
us,  hidden  from  us.  Then,  in  that  strange  Dream,  how 
we  clutch  at  shadows  as  if  they  were  substances  ;  and 
sleep  deepest  while  fancying  ourselves  most  awake ! 
Which  of  your  Philosophical  Systems  is  other  than  a 
dream-theorem  ;  a  net  quotient,  confidently  given  out, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  55 

where  divisor  and  dividend  are  both  unknown?  What 
are  all  your  national  Wars,  with  their  Moscow  Retreats, 
and  sanguinary  hate-filled  Revolutions,  but  the  Som- 
nambulism of  uneasy  Sleepers?  This  Dreaming,  this 
Somnambulism  is  what  we  on  Earth  call  Life  ;  wherein 
the  most  indeed  undoubtingly  wander,  as  if  they  knew 
right  hand  from  left  ;  yet  they  only  are  wise  who  know 
that  they  know  nothing. 

"  Pity  that  all  Metaphysics  had  hitherto  proved  so 
inexpressibly  unproductive !  The  secret  of  Man's 
Being  is  still  like  the  Sphinx's  secret  :  a  riddle  that  he 
cannot  rede ;  and  for  ignorance  of  which  he  suffers 
death,  the  worst  death,  a  spiritual.  What  are  your 
Axioms,  and  Categories,  and  Systems,  and  Aphor- 
isms? Words,  words.  High  Air-castles  are  cunningly 
built  of  Words,  the  Words  well  bedded  also  in  good 
Logic-mortar ;  wherein  however,  no  Knowledge  will 
come  to  lodge.  The  whole  is  greater  than  the  part  : 
how  exceedingly  true  !  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum  :  how 
exceedingly  false  and  calumnious !  Again,  Nothing 
can  act  but  where  it  is  :  with  all  my  heart ;  only,  WHERE 
is  it  ?  Be  not  the  slave  of  Words  :  is  not  the  Distant, 
the  Dead,  while  I  love  it,  and  long  for  it,  and  mourn  for 
it,  Here,  in  the  genuine  sense,  as  truly  as  the  floor  I 
stand  on  ?  But  that  same  WHERE,  with  its  brother 
WHEN,  are  from  the  first  the  master-colors  of  our  Dream- 
grotto  ;  say  rather,  the  Canvas  (the  warp  and  woof 
thereof)  whereon  all  our  Dreams  and  Life-visions  are 
painted.  Nevertheless,  has  not  a  deeper  meditation 
taught  certain  of  every  climate  and  age,  that  the  WHERE 
and  WHEN,  so  mysteriously  inseparable  from  all  our 
thoughts,  are  but  superficial  terrestrial  adhesions  to 
thought ;  that  the  Seer  may  discern  them  where  they 
mount  up  out  of  the  celestial  EVERYWHERE  and  FOREVER  : 


56  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

have  not  all  nations  conceived  their  God  as  Omni- 
present and  Eternal ;  as  existing  in  a  universal  HERE, 
an  everlasting  Now  ?  Think  well,  thou  too  wilt  find 
that  Space  is  but  a  mode  of  our  human  Sense,  so  like- 
wise Time ;  there  is  no  Space  and  no  Time  :  WE  are — 
we  know  not  what ;  light-sparkles  floating  in  the  aether 
of  Deity  ! 

"So  that  this  so  solid-seeming  World,  after  all,  were 
but  an  air-image,  our  ME  the  only  reality  :  and  Nature, 
with  its  thousandfold  production  and  destruction,  but 
the  reflex  of  our  own  inward  Force,  the  "  phantasy  of 
our  Dream  ;  "  or  what  the  Earth-Spirit  in  Faust  names 
it,  the  living  visible  Garment  of  God  : 

'' '  In  Being's  floods,  in  Action's  storm, 
I  walk  and  work,  above,  beneath, 
Work  and  weave  in  endless  motion  ! 

Birth  and  Death, 

An  infinite  ocean  ; 

A  seizing  and  giving 

The  fire  of  Living : 

'Tis  thus  at  the  roaring  Loom  of  Time  I  ply, 
And  weave  for  God  the  Garment  thou  seest  Him  by.' 

Of  twenty  millions  that  have  read  and  spouted  this 
thunder-speech  of  the  Erdgeist,  are  there  yet  twenty 
units  of  us  that  have  learned  the  meaning  thereof? 

' '  It  was  in  some  such  mood,  when  wearied  and  for- 
done with  these  high  speculations,  that  I  first  came  upon 
the  question  of  Clothes.  Strange  enough,  it  strikes  me,  is 
this  same  fact  of  there  being  Tailors  and  Tailored.  The 
Horse  I  ride  has  his  own  whole  fell :  strip  him  of  the 
girths  and  flaps  and  extraneous  tags  I  have  fastened 
round  him,  and  the  noble  creature  is  his  o-wn  sempster 
and  weaver  and  spinner;  nay  his  own  boot-maker, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  57 

jeweller,  and  man-milliner  ;  he  bounds  free  through 
the  valleys,  with  a  perennial  rainproof  court-suit  on  his 
body  ;  wherein  warmth  and  easiness  of  fit  have  reached 
perfection  ;  nay,  the  graces  also  have  been  considered, 
and  frills  and  fringes,  with  gay  variety  of  color,  featly 
appended,  and  ever  in  the  right  place,  are  not  wanting. 
While  I — good  Heaven  ! — have  thatched  myself  over 
with  the  dead  fleeces  of  sheep,  the  bark  of  vegetables, 
the  entrails  of  worms,  the  hides  of  oxen  or  seals,  the 
felt  of  furred  beasts  ;  and  walk  abroad  a  moving  Rag- 
screen,  overheaped  with  shreds  and  tatters  raked  from 
the  Charnel-house  of  Nature,  where  they  -would  have 
rotted,  to  rot  on  me  more  slowly  !  Day  after  day,  I 
must  thatch  myself  anew  ;  day  after  day,  this  despic- 
able thatch  must  lose  some  film  of  its  thickness  ; 
some  film  of  it,  frayed  away  by  tear  and  wear,  must 
be  brushed-off  into  the  Ashpit,  into  the  Laystall ;  till 
by  degrees  the  whole  has  been  brushed  thither,  and  I, 
the  dust-making,  patent  Rag-grinder,  get  new  material 
to  grind  down.  O  subter-brutish  !  vile  !  most  vile ! 
For  have  not  I  too  a  compact  all-enclosing  Skin,  whiter 
or  dingier?  Am  I  a  botched  mass  of  tailors'  and  cob- 
blers' shreds,  then  ;  or  a  tightly-articulated,  homoge- 
neous little  Figure,  automatic,  nay  alive  ? 

"Strange  enough  how  creatures  of  the  human-kind 
shut  their  eyes  to  plainest  facts  ;  and  by  the  mere 
inertia  of  Oblivion  and  Stupidity,  live  at  ease  in  the 
midst  of  Wonder  and  Terrors.  But  indeed  man  is,  and 
was  always,  a  blockhead  and  dullard ;  much  readier 
to  feel  and  digest,  than  to  think  and  consider.  Prej- 
udice, which  he  pretends  to  hate,  is  his  absolute  law- 
giver ;  mere  use-and-wont  everywhere  leads  him  by 
the  nose  ;  thus  let  but  a  Rising  of  the  Sun,  let  but  a 
Creation  of  the  World  happen  twice  and  it  ceases  to  be 


58  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

marvellous,  to  be  noteworthy,  or  noticeable.  Perhaps 
not  once  in  a  lifetime  does  it  occur  to  your  ordinary 
biped,  of  any  country  or  generation,  be  he  gold  mantled 
Prince  orrusset-jerkined  Peasant,  that  his  Vestments  and 
his  Self  are  not  one  and  indivisible  ;  that  he  is  naked, 
without  vestments,  till  he  buy  or  steal  such,  and  by 
forethought  sew  and  button  them. 

"For  my  own  part,  these  considerations,  of  our 
Clothes-thatch,  and  how,  reaching  inwards  even  to  our 
heart  of  hearts,  it  tailorizes  and  demoralizes  us,  fill  me 
with  a  certain  horror  at  myself  and  mankind  ;  almost 
as  one  feels  at  those  Dutch  Cows,  which,  during  the 
wet  season,  you  see  grazing  deliberately  with  jackets 
and  petticoats  (of  striped  sacking),  in  the  meadows  of 
Gouda.  Nevertheless  there  is  something  great  in  the 
moment  when  a  man  first  strips  himself  of  adventitious 
wrappages  ;  and  sees  indeed  that  he  is  naked,  and,  as 
Swift  has  it,  'a  forked  straddling  animal  with  bandy 
legs  ; '  yet  also  a  Spirit,  and  unutterable  Mystery  of 
Mysteries." 


XESARTUS.  59 


CHAPTER   IX. 

ADAMITISM. 

LET  no  courteous  reader  take  offence  at  the  opinions 
broached  in  the  conclusion  of  the  last  Chapter.  The 
Editor  himself,  on  first  glancing  over  that  singular  pas- 
sage, was  inclined  to  exclaim  :  What,  have  we  got  not 
only  a  Sansculottist,  but  an  enemy  to  Clothes  in  the 
abstract  ?  A  new  Adamite,  in  this  century,  which  flat- 
ters itself  that  it  is  the  Nineteenth,  and  destructive  both 
to  Superstition  and  Enthusiasm  ? 

Consider,  thou  foolish  Teufelsdrockh,  what  benefits 
unspeakable  all  ages  and  sexes  derive  from  Clothes. 
For  example,  when  thou  thyself,  a  watery,  pulpy,  slob- 
bery freshman  and  new-comer  in  this  Planet,  sattest 
muling  and  puking  in  thy  nurse's  arms  ;  sucking  thy 
coral,  and  looking  forth  into  the  world  in  the  blankest 
manner,  what  hadst  thou  been  without  thy  blankets, 
and  bibs,  and  other  nameless  hulls  ?  A  terror  to  thy- 
self and  mankind  !  Or  hast  thou  forgotten  the  day 
when  thou  first  receivedst  breeches,  and  thy  long  clothes 
became  short  ?  The  village  where  thou  livedst  was  all 
apprised  of  the  fact ;  and  neighbor  after  neighbor  kissed 
thy  pudding  cheek,  and  gave  thee,  as  handsel,  silver 
or  copper  coins,  on  that  the  first  gala-day  of  thy  exist- 
ence. Again,  wert  not  thou,  at  one  period  of  life,  a 
Buck,  or  Blood,  or  Macaroni,  or  Incroyable,  or  Dandy, 


60  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

or  by  whatever  name,  according  to  year  and  place, 
such  phenomenon  is  distinguished  ?  In  that  one  word 
lie  included  mysterious  volumes.  Nay,  now  when  the 
reign  of  folly  is  over,  or  altered,  and  thy  clothes  are 
not  for  triumph  but  for  defence,  hast  thou  always  worn 
them  perforce,  and  as  a  consequence  of  Man's  Fall ; 
never  rejoiced  in  them  as  in  a  warm  movable  House, 
a  Body  round  thy  Body,  wherein  that  strange  TrfEE  of 
thine  sat  snug,  defying  all  variations  of  Climate  ?  Girt 
with  thick  doubler-milled  kerseys ;  half-buried  under 
shawls  and  broadbrims,  and  overalls  and  mud-boots, 
thy  very  fingers  cased  in  doeskin  and  mittens,  thou 
hast  bestrode  that  "Horse  I  ride;"  and,  though  it 
were  in  wild  winter,  dashed  through  the  world,  glory- 
ing in  it  as  if  thou  wert  its  lord.  In  vain  did  the  sleet 
beat  round  thy  temples ;  it  lighted  only  on  thy  im- 
penetrable, felted  or  woven,  case  of  wool.  In  vain 
did  the  winds  howl, — forests  sounding  and  creaking, 
deep  calling  unto  deep, — and  the  storms  heap  them- 
selves together  into  one  huge  Arctic  whirlpool :  thou 
flewest  through  the  middle  thereof,  striking  fire  from 
the  highway ;  wild  music  hummed  in  thy  ears,  thou 
too  wert  as  a  "sailor  of  the  air  ;  "  the  wreck  of  matter 
and  the  crash  of  worlds  was  thy  element  and  pro- 
pitiously wafting  tide.  Without  Clothes,  without  bit 
or  saddle,  what  hadst  thou  been  ;  what  had  thy  fleet 
quadruped  been  ? — Nature  is  good,  but  she  is  not  the 
best :  here  truly  was  the  victory  of  Art  over  Nature. 
A  thunderbolt  indeed  might  have  pierced  thee }  all 
short  of  this  thou  couldst  defy. 

Or,  cries  the  courteous  reader,  has  your  Teufels- 
drOckh  forgotten  what  he  said  lately  about  "Aborigi- 
nal Savages/'  and  their  "condition  miserable  indeed?" 
Would  he  have  all  this  unsaid  >  and  us  betake  ourselves 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  6 1 

again  to  the  "matted-cloak,"  and  go  sheeted  in  a 
"thick  natural  fell?" 

Nowise,  courteous  reader !  The  Professor  knows 
full  well  what  he  is  saying  ;  and  both  thou  and  we,  in 
our  haste,  do  him  wrong.  If  Clothes,  in  these  times, 
"so  tailorizeand  demoralize  us,"  have  they  no  redeem- 
ing value  ;  can  they  not  be  altered  to  serve  better  ; 
must  they  of  necessity  be  thrown  to  the  dogs?  The 
truth  is,  Teufelsdrockh,  though  a  Sansculottist,  is  no 
Adamite  ;  and  much  perhaps  as  he  might  wish  to  go 
forth  before  this  degenerate  age  "as  a  Sign,"  would  no- 
wise wish  to  do  it,  as  those  old  Adamites  did,  in  a 
state  of  Nakedness.  The  utility  of  Clothes  is  altogether 
apparent  to  him  :  nay,  perhaps  he  has  an  insight  into 
their  more  recondite,  and  almost  mystic  qualities,  what 
we  might  call  the  omnipotent  virtue  of  Clothes,  such  as 
was  never  before  vouchsafed  to  any  man.  For  example  : 

"You  see  two  individuals,"  he  writes,  "one  dressed 
in  fine  Red,  the  other  in  coarse  threadbare  Blue  :  Red 
says  to  Blue,  '  Be  hanged  and  anatomized  ; '  Blue  hears 
with  a  shudder,  and  (O  wonder  of  wonders  !)  marches 
sorrowfully  to  the  gallows  ;  is  there  noosed-up,  vibrates 
his  hour,  and  the  surgeons  dissect  him,  and  fit  his  bones 
into  a  skeleton  for  medical  purposes.  How  is  this  ;  or 
what  make  ye  of  your  Nothing  can  act  but  where  it  is  j3 
Red  has  no  physical  hold  of  Blue,  no  clutch  of  him,  is 
nowise  in  contact  with  him :  neither  are  those  minister- 
ing Sheriffs  and  Lord-Lieutenants  and  Hangmen  and 
Tipstaves  so  related  to  commanding  Red,  that  he  can 
tug  them  hither  and  thither ;  but  each  stands  distinct 
within  his  own  skin.  Nevertheless,  as  it  is  spoken,  so  is 
it  done  :  the  articulated  Word  sets  all  hands  in  Action  ; 
and  Rope  and  improved-drop  perform  their  work. 

"  Thinking  reader,  the  reason  seems  to  me  twofold  ; 


62  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

First,  that  Man  is  a  Spirit,  and  bound  by  invisible  bonds 
to  All  Men;  secondly,  that  he  wears  Clothes,  which  are 
the  visible  emblems  of  that  fact.  Has  not  your  Red 
hanging-individual  a  horsehair  wig,  squirrel-skins,  and 
a  plush-gown  ;  whereby  all  mortals  know  that  he  is  a 
JUDGE  ? — Society,  which  the  more  I  think  of  it  astonishes 
me  the  more,  is  founded  upon  Cloth. 

"  Often  in  my  atrabiliar  moods,  when  I  read  of  pom- 
pous ceremonials,  Frankfort  Coronations,  Royal  Draw- 
ing-rooms, Levees,  Couchees  ?  and  how  the  ushers 
and  macers  and  pursuivants,  are  all  in  waiting ;  how 
Duke  this  is  presented  by  Archduke  that,  and  Colonel 
A  by  General  B,  and  innumerable  Bishops,  Admirals, 
and  miscellaneous  Functionaries,  are  advancing  gal- 
lantly to  the  Anointed  Presence ;  and  I  strive,  in  my 
remote  privacy,  to  form  a  clear  picture  of  that  solem- 
nity,— on  a  sudden,  as  by  some  enchanter's  wand,  the — 
shall  I  speak  it  ? — the  Clothes  fly-off  the  whole  dramatic 
corps ;  and  Dukes,  Grandees,  Bishops,  Generals, 
Anointed  Presence  itself,  every  mother's  son  of  them, 
stand  straddling  there,  not  a  shirt  on  them  ;  and  I  know 
not  whether  to  laugh  or  weep.  This  physical  or  psychi- 
cal infirmity,  in  which  perhaps  I  am  not  singular,  I 
have,  after  hesitation,  thought  right  to  publish,  for  the 
solace  of  those  afflicted  with  the  like. " 

Would  to  Heaven,  say  we,  thou  hadst  thought  right  to 
keep  it  secret !  Who  is  there  now  that  can  read  the 
five  columns  of  Presentations  in  his  Morning  News- 
paper without  a  shudder?  Hypochondriac  men,  and 
all  men  are  to  a  certain  extent  hypochondriac,  should  be 
more  gently  treated.  With  what  readiness  our  fancy, 
in  this  shattered  state  of  the  nerves,  follows  out  the  con- 
sequences which  Teufelsdrockh,  with  a  devilish  cool- 
ness, goes  on  to  draw  ; 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  63 

"  What  would  Majesty  do,  could  such  an  accident  be- 
fall in  reality  ;  should  the  buttons  all  simultaneously 
start,  and  the  solid  wool  evaporate,  in  very  Deed,  as  here 
in  Dream?  Ach  Golt !  How  each  skulks  into  the 
nearest  hiding-place  ;  their  high  State  Tragedy  (Haupt- 
und  Staals-Actiori)  becomes  a  Pickleherring-Farce  to 
weep  at,  which  is  the  worst  kind  of  Farce  ;  the  tables 
(according  to  Horace),  and  with  them,  the  whole  fabric 
of  Government,  Legislation,  Property,  Police,  and  Civ- 
ilized Society,  are  dissolved,  in  wails  and  howls." 

Lives  the  man  that  can  figure  a  naked  Duke  of  Win- 
dlestraw  addressing  a  naked  House  of  Lords  ?  Imagin- 
ation, choked  as  in  mephitic  air,  recoils  on  itself,  and 
will  not  forward  with  the  picture.  The  Woolsack,  the 
Ministerial,  the  Opposition  Benches — infandum!  infan- 
dum  !  And  yet  why  is  the  thing  impossible  ?  Was  not 
every  soul,  or  rather  every  body  of  these  Guardians 
of  our  Liberties,  naked,  or  nearly  so,  last  night;  "a 
forked  Radish  with  a  head  fantastically  carved  "  ?  And 
why  might  he  not,  did  our  stern  fate  so  order  it,  walk 
out  to  St.  Stephen's  as  well  as  into  bed,  in  that  no- 
fashion  ;  and  there,  with  other  similar  Radishes,  hold 
a  Bed  of  Justice  ?  "  Solace  of  those  afflicted  with  the 
like !  "  Unhappy  Teufelsdrockh,  had  man  ever  such  a 
"  physical  or  psychical  infirmity  "  before  ?  And  now 
how  many,  perhaps,  may  thy  unparalleled  confession 
(which  we,  even  to  the  sounder  British  world,  and 
goaded-on  by  Critical  and  Biographical  duty,  grudge 
to  reimpart)  incurably  infect  therewith  !  Art  thou  the 
malignest  of  Sansculottists,  or  only  the  maddest  ? 

"  It  will  remain  to  be  examined,"  adds  the  inexorable 
Teufelsdrockh,  ' '  in  how  far  the  SCARECROW,  as  a  Clothed 
Person,  is  not  also  entitled  to  benefit  of  clergy,  and 
English  trial  by  jury  :  nay,  perhaps,  considering  his 


64  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

high  function  (for  is  not  he  too  a  Defender  of  Property, 
and  Sovereign  armed  with  the  terrors  of  the  Law  ?),  to  a 
certain  royal  Immunity  and  Inviolability  ;  which,  how- 
ever, misers  and  the  meaner  class  of  persons  are  not 
always  voluntarily  disposed  to  grant  him."  .... 
"  O  my  Friends,  we  are  (in  Yorick  Sterne's  words)  but 
as  '  turkeys  driven,  with  a  stick  and  red  clout  to  the 
market  : '  or  if  some  drivers,  as  they  do  in  Norfolk,  take 
a  dried  bladder  and  put  peas  in  it,  the  rattle  thereof 
terrifies  the  boldest  1 " 


SAR2VR  RESARTUS.  65 


CHAPTER  X. 

PURE     REASON. 

IT  must  now  be  apparent  enough  that  our  Professor, 
as  above  hinted,  is  a  speculative  Radical,  and  of  the 
very  darkest  tinge  ;  acknowledging,  for  most  part,  in 
the  solemnities  and  paraphernalia  of  civilized  Life, 
which  we  make  so  much  of,  nothing  but  so  many 
Cloth-rags,  turkey-poles,  and  "bladders  with  dried 
peas."  To  linger  among  such  speculations,  longer  than 
mere  Science  requires,  a  discerning  public  can  have  no 
wish.  For  our  purposes  the  simple  fact  that  such  a 
Naked  World  is  possible,  nay  actually  exist  (under  the 
Clothed  one),  will  be  sufficient.  Much,  therefore,  we 
omit  about  "  Kings  wrestling  naked  on  the  green  with 
Carmen,"  and  the  Kings  being  thrown  :  "dissect  them 
with  scalpels, "  says  Teufelsdrockh  ;  ' '  the  same  viscera, 
tissues?  livers,  lights,  and  other  life-tackle,  are  there  : 
examine  their  spiritual  mechanism ;  the  same  great 
Need,  great  Greed,  and  little  Faculty  ;  nay  ten  to  one 
but  the  Carman,  who  understands  draught-cattle,  the 
rimming  of  wheels,  something  of  the  laws  of  unstable 
and  stable  equilibrium,  with  other  branches  of  wagon- 
science,  and  has  actually  put  forth  his  hand  and  oper- 
ated on  Nature,  is  the  more  cunningly  gifted  of  the  two. 
Whence,  then,  their  so  unspeakable  difference  ?  From 
Clothes. "  Much  also  we  shall  omit  about  confusion  of 
5 


66  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Ranks,  and  Joan  and  My  Lady,  and  how  it  would  be 
everywhere  "  Hail  fellow  well  met,"  and  Chaos  were 
come  again  :  all  which  to  any  one  that  has  once  fairly 
pictured-out  the  grand  mother-idea,  Society  in  a  slate  of 
Nakedness,  will  spontaneously  suggest  itself.  Should 
some  sceptical  individual  still  entertain  doubts  whether 
in  a  world  without  Clothes,  the  smallest  Politeness, 
Polity,  or  even  Police,  could  exist,  let  him  turn  to  the 
original  Volume,  and  view  there  the  boundless  Ser- 
bonian  Bog  of  Sansculottism,  stretching  sour  and  pesti- 
lential :  over  which  we  have  lightly  flown  ;  where  not 
only  whole  armies  but  whole  nations  might  sink  !  If 
indeed  the  following  argument,  in  its  brief  riveting 
emphasis,  be  not  of  itself  incontrovertible  and  final  : 

"Are  we  Opossums  ;  have  we  natural  Pouches,  like 
the  Kangaroo?  Or  how,  without  Clothes,  could  we 
possess  the  master-organ,  soul's  seat,  and  true  pineal 
gland  of  the  Body  Social  :  I  mean,  a  PURSE  ?  " 

Nevertheless  it  is  impossible  to  hate  Professor  Teu- 
felsdrockh  ;  at  worst,  one  knows  not  whether  to  hate 
or  to  love  him.  For  though,  in  looking  at  the  fair 
tapestry  of  human  Life,  with  its  royal  and  even  sacred 
figures,  he  dwells  not  on  the  obverse  alone,  but  here 
chiefly  on  the  reverse  ;  and  indeed  turns  out  the  rough 
seams,  tatters,  and  manifold  thrums  of  that  unsightly 
wrong-side,  with  an  almost  diabolic  patience  and  in- 
difference, which  must  have  sunk  him  in  the  estimation 
of  most  readers, — there  is  that  within  which  unspeak- 
ably distinguishes  him  from  all  other  past  and  present 
Sansculottists.  The  grand  unparalleled  peculiarity  of 
Teufelsdrockh  is,  that  with  all  this  Descendentalism, 
he  combines  a  Transcendentalism,  no  less  superlative  ; 
whereby  if  on  the  one  hand  he  degrade  man  belpw 
most  animals,  except  those  jacketed  Gouda  Cows,  he, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  67 

on  the  other,  exalts  him  beyond  the  visible  Heavens, 
almost  to  an  equality  with  the  Gods. 

"To  the  eye  of  vulgar  Logic,"  says  he,  "what  is 
man?  An  omnivorous  Biped  that  wears  Breeches.  To 
the  eye  of  Pure  Reason  what  is  he  ?  A  Soul,  a  Spirit, 
and  divine  Apparition.  Round  his  mysterious  ME, 
there  lies,  under  all  those  wool-rags,  a  Garment  of 
Flesh  (or  of  Senses),  contextured  in  the  Loom  of 
Heaven  ;  whereby  he  is  revealed  to  his  like,  and  dwells 
with  them  in  UNION  and  DIVISION  ;  and  sees  and  fashions 
for  himself  a  Universe,  with  azure  Starry  Spaces,  and 
long  Thousands  of  Years.  Deep-hidden  is  he  under 
that  strange  Garment ;  amid  Sounds  and  Colors  and 
Forms,  as  it  were,  swathed-in,  and  inextricably  over- 
shrouded  :  yet  it  is  sky-woven,  and  worthy  of  a  God. 
Stands  he  not  thereby  in  the  center  of  Immensities,  in 
the  conflux  of  Eternities?  He  feels;  power  has  been 
given  him  to  know,  to  believe  ;  nay  does  not  the  spirit 
of  Love,  free  in  its  celestial  primeval  brightness,  even 
here,  though  but  for  moments,  look  through  ?  Well 
said  Saint  Chrysostom,  with  his  lips  of  gold,  '  the  true 
SHEKINAH  is  Man  :  where  else  is  the  GOD'S-PRESENCE 
manifested  not  to  our  eyes  only,  but  to  our  hearts,  as 
in  our  fellow-man  ?  " 

In  such  passages,  unhappily  too  rare,  the  high  Pla- 
tonic Mysticism  of  our  Author,  which  is  perhaps  the 
fundamental  element  of  his  nature,  bursts  forth,  as 
it  were,  in  full  flood  :  and,  through  all  the  vapor  and 
tarnish  of  what  is  often  so  perverse,  so  mean  in  his 
exterior  and  environment,  we  seem  to  look  into  a  whole 
inward  Sea  of  Light  and  Love  ; — though,  alas,  the  grim 
coppery  clouds  soon  roll  together  again  and  hide  it 
from  view. 

Such  tendency  to  Mysticism  is  everywhere  traceable 


68  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

in  this  man  ;  and  indeed,  to  attentive  readers,  must 
have  been  long  ago  apparent.  Nothing  that  he  sees 
but  has  more  than  a  common  meaning,  but  has  two 
meanings  :  thus  if  in  the  highest  Imperial  Sceptre  and 
Charlemagne-Mantle,  as  well  as  in  the  poorest  Ox-goad 
and  Gipsy-Blanket,  he  finds  Prose,  Decay,  Contempti- 
bility  ;  there  is  in  each  sort  Poetry  also,  and  a  reverend 
Worth.  For  Matter,  were  it  never  so  despicable,  is 
Spirit,  the  manifestation  of  Spirit :  were  it  never  so 
honorable,  can  it  be  more?  The  thing  Visible,  nay. 
the  thing  Imagined,  the  thing  in  any  way  conceived 
as  Visible,  what  is  it  but  a  Garment,  a  Clothing  of  the 
higher,  celestial  Invisible,  "unimaginable,  formless, 
dark  with  excess  of  bright?"  Under  which  point  of 
view  the  following  passage,  so  strange  in  purport,  so 
strange  in  phrase,  seems  characteristic  enough  : 

"The  beginning  of  all  Wisdom  is  to  look  fixedly  on 
Clothes,  or  even  with  armed  eyesight,  till  they  become 
transparent.  '  The  Philosopher, '  says  the  wisest  of 
this  age,  '  must  station  himself  in  the  middle  : '  how 
true  !  The  Philosopher  is  he  to  whom  the  Highest  has 
descended,  and  the  Lowest  has  mounted  up  ;  who  is 
the  equal  and  kindly  brother  of  all. 

"Shall  we  tremble  before  clothwebs  and  cobwebs, 
whether  woven  in  Arkwright  looms,  or  by  the  silent 
Arachnes  that  weave  unrestingly  in  our  imagination  ? 
Or,  on  the  other  hand,  what  is  there  that  we  cannot 
love  ;  since  all  was  created  by  God  ? 

"  Happy  he  who  can  look  through  the  Clothes  of 
a  Man  (the  woollen,  and  fleshly,  and  official  Bankpaper 
and  State-paper  Clothes)  into  the  Man  himself;  and  dis- 
cern, it  may  be,  in  this  or  the  other  Dread  Potentate,  a 
more  or  less  incompetent  Digestive-apparatus  ;  yet  also 


SARTOK  RESARTUS.  Cr 

an  inscrutable  venerable  Mystery,  in  the  meanest 
Tinker  that  sees  with  eyes  !  " 

For  the  rest,  as  is  natural  to  a  man  of  this  kind,  he 
deals  much  in  the  feeling  of  Wonder  ;  insists  on  the 
necessity  and  high  worth  of  universal  Wonder  ;  which 
he  holds  to  be  the  only  reasonable  temper  for  the  deni- 
zen of  so  singular  a  Planet  as  ours.  "  Wonder,"  says 
he,  "is  the  basis  of  Worship:  the  reign  of  wonder  is 
perennial,  indestructible  in  Man  ;  only  at  certain  stages 
(as  the  present),  it  is,  for  some  short  season,  a  reign 
in  partibus  infidelium. "  That  progress  of  Science,  which 
is  to  destroy  Wonder,  and  in  its  stead  substitute  Men- 
suration and  Numeration,  finds  small  favor  with 
Teufelsdrockh,  much  as  he  otherwise  venerates  these 
two  latter  processes. 

"Shall  your  Science,"  exclaims  he,  " proceed  in  the 
small  chink-lighted,  or  even  oil-lighted,  underground 
workshop  of  Logic  alone  ;  and  man's  mind  become  an 
Arithmetical  Mill,  whereof  Memory  is  the  Hopper,  and 
mere  Tables  of  Sines  and  Tangents,  Codification,  and 
Treatises  of  what  you  call  Political  Economy,  are 
the  Meal  ?  And  what  is  that  Science,  which  the 
scientific  head  alone,  were  it  screwed  off,  and  (like  the 
Doctor's  in  the  Arabian  Tale)  set  in  a  basin  to  keep  it 
alive,  could  prosecute  without  shadow  of  a  heart, — but 
one  other  of  the  mechanical  and  menial  handicrafts, 
for  which  the  Scientific  Head  (having  a  Soul  in  it)  is 
too  noble  an  organ  ?  I  mean  that  Thought  without 
Reverence  is  barren,  perhaps  poisonous ;  at  best,  dies 
like  cookery  with  the  day  that  called  it  forth  ;  does  not 
live,  like  sowing,  in  successive  tilths  and  wider-spread- 
ing harvests,  bringing  food  and  plenteous  increase  to 
all  time." 

In  such  wise  does  Teufelsdrockh  deal  hits,  harder  or 


*fb  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

softer,  according  to  ability  ;  yet  ever,  as  we  would  fain 
persuade  ourselves,  with  charitable  intent.  Above  all, 
that  class  of  "  Logic-choppers,  and  treble-pipe  Scoffers, 
and  professed  Enemies  to  Wonder  ;  who,  in  these  days, 
so  numerously  patrol  as  night-constables  about  the 
Mechanics'  Institute  of  Science,  and  cackle,  like  true 
Old-Roman  geese  and  goslings  round  their  Capitol,  on 
any  alarm,  or  on  none  ;  nay  who  often,  as  illuminated 
Sceptics,  walk  abroad  into  peaceable  society,  in  full 
daylight  with  rattle  and  lantern,  and  insist  on  guiding 
you  and  guarding  you  therewith,  though  the  Sun  is 
shining,  and  the  street  populous  with  mere  justice-lov- 
ing men  :  "  that  whole  class  is  inexpressibly  wearisome 
to  him.  Hear  with  what  uncommon  animation  he 
perorates  : 

"The  man  who  cannot  wonder,  who  does  not  hab- 
itually wonder  (and  worship),  were  he  President  of  in- 
numerable Royal  Societies,  and  carried  the  whole  M£- 
canique  Celeste  and  HegeFs  Philosophy,  and  the  epitome 
of  all  Laboratories  and  Observatories  with  their  results, 
in  his  single  head, — is  but  a  Pair  of  Spectacles  behind 
which  there  is  no  Eye.  Let  those  who  have  Eyes 
look  through  him,  then  he  may  be  useful. 

"Thou  wilt  have  no  Mystery  and  Mysticism  ;  wilt 
walk  through  thy  world  by  the  sunshine  of  what  thou 
callest  Truth,  or  even  by  the  hand-lamp  of  what  I  call 
Attorney-Logic;  and  '  explain' all,  '  account '  for  all,  or 
believe  nothing  of  it  ?  Nay,  thou  wilt  attempt  laugh- 
ter ;  whoso  recognizes  the  unfathomable,  all-pervading 
domain  of  Mystery,  which  is  everywhere  under  our 
feet  and  among  our  hands  ;  to  whom  the  Universe  is 
an  Oracle  and  Temple,  as  well  as  a  Kitchen  and  Cattle- 
stall, — he  shall  be  a  delirious  Mystic ;  to  him  thou, 
with  sniffing  charity,  wilt  protrusively  proffer  thy  hand- 


SA  R  TOR  RES  A  R  TUS.  J  i 

lamp,  and  shriek,  as  one  injured,  when  he  kicks  his 
foot  through  it? — Armer  Tenfel !  Doth  not  thy  cow 
calve,  doth  not  thy  bull  gender  ?  Thou  thyself,  wert 
thou  not  born,  wilt  thou  not  die?  'Explain'  me  all 
this,  or  do  one  of  two  things  :  Retire  into  private  places 
with  thy  foolish  cackle  ;  or,  what  were  better,  give  it 
up,  and  weep,  not  that  the  reign  of  wonder  is  done, 
and  God's  world  all  disembellished  and  prosaic,  but 
that  thou  hitherto  art  a  Dilettante  and  sand-blind 
Pedant." 


SARTOR  RESARTU& 


CHAPTER  XL 

PROSPECTIVE. 

THE  Philosophy  of  Clothes  is  now  to  all  readers,  as 
we  predicted  it  would  do,  unfolding-  itself  into  new 
boundless  expansions,  of  a  cloud-capt,  almost  chimer- 
ical aspect,  yet  not  without  azure  loomings  in  the  far 
distance,  and  streaks  as  of  an  Elysian  brightness  ;  the 
highly  questionable  purport  and  promise  of  which  it  is 
becoming  more  and  more  important  for  us  to  ascertain. 
Is  that  a  real  Elysian  brightness,  cries  many  a  timid 
wayfarer,  or  the  reflex  of  Pandemonian  lava  ?  Is  it  of 
a^  truth  leading  us  into  beatific  Asphodel  meadows,  or 
the  yellow-burning  marl  of  a  Hell-on-Earth  ? 

Our  Professor,  like  other  Mystics,  whether  delirious 
or  inspired,  gives  an  Editor  enough  to  do.  Ever  higher 
and  dizzier  are  the  heights  he  leads  us  to  ;  more  pierc- 
ing, all-comprehending,  all-confounding  are  his  views 
and  glances.  For  example,  this  of  Nature  being  not  an 
Aggregate  but  a  Whole  : 

"Well  sang  the  Hebrew  Psalmist:  'If  I  take  the 
wings  of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  universe,  God  is  there. '  Thou  thyself,  O  culti- 
vated reader,  who  too  probably  art  no  Psalmist,  but  a 
Prosaist,  knowing  GOD  only  by  tradition,  knowestthou 
any  corner  of  the  world  where  at  least  FORCE  is  not  ? 
The  drop  which  thou  shakest  from  thy  wet  hand,  rests 


SARTOR  RESARTUS,  73 

not  where  it  falls,  but  to-morrow  thou  findest  it  swept 
away  ;  already  on  the  wings  of  the  Northwind,  it  is 
nearing  the  Tropic  of  Cancer.  How  came  it  to  evap- 
orate, and  not  lie  motionless  ?  Thinkest  thou  there  is 
aught  motionless  ;  without  Force,  and  utterly  dead? 

"As  I  rode  through  the  Schwarzwald,  I  said  to  my- 
self :  That  little  fire  which  glows  star-like  across  the 
dark-growing  (nachtende)  moor,  where  the  sooty  smith 
bends  over  his  anvil,  and  thou  hopest  to  replace  thy 
lost  horse-shoe, — is- it  a  detached,  separated  speck,  cut- 
off from  the  whole  Universe  ;  or  indissolubly  joined  to 
the  whole  ?  Thou  fool,  that  smithy-fire  was  (primarily) 
kindled  at  the  Sun  ;  is  fed  by  air  that  circulates  from 
before  Noah's  Deluge,  from  beyond  the  Dogstar ; 
therein,  with  Iron  Force,  and  Coal  Force,  and  the  far 
stranger  Force  of  Man,  are  cunning  affinities  and  bat- 
tles and  victories  of  Force  brought  about  ;  it  is  a  little 
ganglion,  or  nervous  centre,  in  the  great  vital  system 
of  Immensity.  Call  it,  if  thou  wilt,  an  unconscious 
Altar,  kindled  on  the  bosom  of  the  All;  whose  iron 
sacrifice,  whose  iron  smoke  and  influence  reach  quite 
through  the  All ;  whose  dingy  Priest,  not  by  word,  yet 
by  brain  and  sinew,  preaches  forth  the  mystery  of 
Force  ;  nay  preaches  forth  (exoterically  enough)  one 
little  textlet  from  the  Gospel  of  Freedom,  the  Gospel  of 
Man's  Force,  commanding,  and  one  day  to  be  all-com- 
manding. 

"Detached,  separated!  I  say  there  is  no  such  sep- 
aration :  nothing  hitherto  was  ever  stranded,  cast 
aside  ;  but  all,  were  it  only  a  withered  leaf,  works  to- 
gether with  all ;  is  borne  forth  on  the  bottomless, 
shoreless  flood  of  Action,  and  lives  through  perpetual 
metamorphoses.  The  withered  leaf  is  not  dead  and 
lost,  there  are  Forces  in  it  and  around  it,  though  work- 


74  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

ing  in  inverse  order ;  else  how  could  it  rot  ?  Despise 
not  the  rag  from  which  man  makes  Paper,  or  the  litter 
from  which  the  earth  makes  Corn.  Rightly  viewed  no 
meanest  object  is  insignificant ;  all  objects  are  as  win- 
dows, through  which  the  philosophic  eye  looks  into 
Infinitude  itself." 

Again,  leaving  that  wondrous  Schwarzwald  Smithy- 
Altar,  what  vacant,  high-sailing  air-ships  are  these,  and 
whither  will  they  sail  with  us  ? 

"All  visible  things  are  emblems  ;  what  thou  seest  is 
not  there  on  its  own  account ;  strictly  taken,  is  not 
there  at  all  :  Matter  exists  only  spiritually,  and  to  rep- 
resent some  Idea,  and  body  it  forth.  Hence  Clothes, 
as  despicable  as  we  think  them,  are  so  unspeakably 
significant.  Clothes,  from  the  King's  mantle  down- 
wards are  emblematic,  not  of  want  only,  but  of  a  man- 
ifold cunning  Victory  over  Want.  On  the  other  hand, 
all  Emblematic  things  are  properly  Clothes,  thought- 
woven  or  hand-woven  :  must  not  the  Imagination 
weave  Garments,  visible  Bodies,  wherein  the  else  invisi- 
ble creations  and  inspirations  of  our  Reason  are,  like 
Spirits,  revealed,  and  first  become  all-powerful ; — the 
rather  if,  as  we  often  see,  the  Hand  too  aid  her,  and 
(by  wool  Clothes  or  otherwise)  reveal  such  even  to  the 
outward  eye  ? 

' '  Men  are  properly  said  to  be  clothed  with  Author- 
ity, clothed  with  Beauty,  with  Curses,  and  the  like. 
Nay,  if  you  consider  it,  what  is  Man  himself,  and  his 
whole  terrestrial  Life,  but  an  Emblem  ;  a  Clothing  or 
visible  Garment  for  that  divine  ME  of  his,  cast  hither, 
like  a  light-particle,  down  from  Heaven  ?  Thus  is  he 
said  also  to  be  clothed  with  a  Body. 

"  Language  is  called  the  Garment  of  Thought  :  how- 
ever, it  should  rather  be,  Language  is  the  Flesh-Gar- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  75 

ment,  the  Body,  of  Thought.  I  said  that  Imagination 
wove  this  Flesh-Garment ;  and  does  not  she  ?  Meta- 
phors are  her  stuff  :  examine  Language  ;  what,  if  you 
except  some  few  primitive  elements  (of  natural  sound), 
what  is  it  all  but  Metaphors,  recognized  as  such,  or  no 
longer  recognized ;  still  fluid  and  florid,  or  now  solid- 
grown  and  colorless  ?  If  those  same  primitive  elements 
are  the  osseous  fixtures  in  the  Flesh-Garment,  Language, 
— then  are  Metaphors  its  muscles  and  tissues  and  liv- 
ing integuments.  An  unmetaphorical  style  you  shall 
in  vain  seek  for  :  is  not  your  very  Attention  a  Stretching- 
to  t>  The  difference  lies  here  :  some  styles  are  lean, 
adust,  wiry,  the  muscle  itself  seems  osseous  :  some  are 
even  quite  pallid,  hunger-bitten  and  dead-looking  ; 
while  others  again  glow  in  the  flush  of  health  and  vig- 
orous self-growth,  sometimes  (as  in  my  own  case)  not 
without  an  apoplectic  tendency.  Moreover,  there  are 
sham  Metaphors,  which  overhanging  that  same 
Thought's-Body  (best  naked),  and  deceptively  bedizen- 
ing, or  bolstering  it  out,  may  be  called  its  false  stuffings, 
superfluous  show-cloaks  (Putz- Mantel),  and  tawdry 
woollen  rags  :  whereof  he  that  runs  and  reads  may 
gather  whole  hampers, — and  burn  them." 

Than  which  paragraph  on  Metaphors  did  the  reader 
ever  chance  to  see  a  more  surprisingly  metaphorical  ? 
However,  that  is  not  our  chief  grievance  ;  the  Professor 
continues  : 

"Why  multiply  instances?  It  is  written,  the 
Heavens  and  the  Earth  shall  fade  away  like  a  Vesture  ; 
which  indeed  they  are  :  the  Time-vesture  of  the  Eternal. 
Whatsoever  sensibly  exists,  whatsoever  represents 
Spirit  to  Spirit,  is  properly  a  Clothing,  a  suit  of  Rai- 
ment, put  on  for  a  season,  and  to  be  laid  off.  Thus  in 
this  one  pregnant  subject  of  CLOTHES,  rightly  under- 


<j6  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

stood,  is  included  all  that  men  have  thought,  dreamed, 
done,  and  been  :  the  whole  External  Universe  and  what 
it  holds  is  but  Clothing  ;  and  the  essence  of  all  Science 
lies  in  the  PHILOSOPHY  of  CLOTHES." 

Towards  these  dim  infinitely-expanded  regions,  close- 
bordering  on  the  impalpable  Inane,  it  is  not  without 
apprehension,  and  perpetual  difficulties,  that  the  Editor 
sees  himself  journeying  and  struggling.  Till  lately  a 
cheerful  daystar  of  hope  hung  before  him,  in  the  ex- 
pected Aid  of  Hofrath  Heuschrecke ;  which  daystar, 
however,  melts  now,  not  into  the  red  of  morning,  but 
into  a  vague,  gray  half-light,  uncertain  whether  dawn 
of  day  or  dusk  of  utter  darkness.  For  the  last  week, 
these  so-called  Biographical  Documents  are  in  his 
hand.  By  the  kindness  of  a  Scottish  Hamburg  Mer- 
chant, whose  name,  known  to  the  whole  mercantile 
world,  he  must  not  mention  ;  but  whose  honorable 
courtesy,  now  and  often  before  spontaneously  mani- 
fested to  him,  a  mere  literary  stranger,  he  cannot  soon 
forget, — the  bulky  Weissnichtwo  Packet,  with  all  its 
Customhouse  seals,  foreign  hieroglyphs,  and  miscel- 
laneous tokens  of  Travel,  arrived  here  in  perfect  safety, 
and  free  of  cost.  The  reader  shall  now  fancy  with 
what  hot  haste  it  was  broken  up,  with  what  breathless 
expectation  glanced  over ;  and,  alas,  with  what  unquiet 
disappointment  it  has,  since  then,  been  often  thrown 
down,  and  again  taken  up. 

Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  in  a  too  long-winded  Letter, 
full  of  compliments,  Weissnichtwo  politics,  dinners, 
dining  repartees,  and  other  ephemeral  trivialities,  pro- 
ceeds to  remind  us  of  what  we  knew  well  already  : 
that  however  it  may  be  with  Metaphysics,  and  other 
abstract  Science  originating  in  the  Head  (Versiand) 
alone,  no  Life-Philosophy  (Lebensphilosophie),  such  as 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  77 

this  of  Clothes  pretends  to  be,  which  originates  equally 
in  the  Character  (Gemuth)  and  equally  speaks  thereto, 
can  attain  its  significance  till  the  Character  itself  is 
known  and  seen  ;  "  till  the  Author's  View  of  the  World 
( Weltansichf),  and  how  he  actively  and  passively  came 
by  such  view,  are  clear  :  in  short  till  a  Biography  of  him 
has  been  philosophico-poetically  written,  and  philosoph- 
ico-poetically  read. "  ' '  Nay, "  adds  he,  ' '  were  the  spec- 
ulative scientific  Truth  even  known,  you  still,  in  this  in- 
quiring age,  ask  yourself,  Whence  came  it,  and  Why, 
and  How  ? — and  rest  not,  till,  if  no  better  may  be,  Fancy 
have  shaped-out  an  answer  ;  and  either  in  the  authentic 
lineaments  of  Fact,  or  the  forged  ones  of  Fiction,  a 
complete  picture  and  Genetical  History  of  the  Man  and 
his  spiritual  Endeavor  lies  before  you.  But  why,"  says 
the  Hofrath,  and  indeed  say  we,  "do  I  dilate  on  the 
uses  of  our  Teufelsdrockh's  Biography?  The  great 
Herr  Minister  von  Goethe  has  penetratingly  remarked 
that  '  Man  is  properly  the  only  object  that  interests 
man  : '  thus  I  too  have  noted,  that  in  Weissnichtwo  our 
whole  conversation  is  little  or  nothing  else  but  Bio- 
graphy or  Auto-Biography  ;  ever  humano-anecdotical 
(menschlich-anekdotiscli).  Biography  is  by  nature  the 
most  universally  profitable,  universally  pleasant  of  all 
things  :  especially  Biography  of  distinguished  individ- 
uals. 

"By  this  time,  mem  Verehrtester  (my  Most  Esteemed), " 
continues  he,  with  an  eloquence  which  unless  the 
words  be  purloined  from  Teufelsdrockh,  or  some  trick 
of  his,  as  we  suspect,  is  well-nigh  unaccountable,  "by 
this  time  you  are  fairly  plunged  (vertieff]  in  that  mighty 
forest  of  Clothes-Philosophy  ;  and  looking  round,  as  all 
readers  do,  with  astonishment  enough.  Such  portions 
and  passages  as  you  have  already  mastered,  and 


78  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

brought  to  paper,  could  not  but  awaken  a  strange 
curiosity  touching  the  mind  they  issued  from ;  the  per- 
haps unparalleled  psychical  mechanism,  which  man- 
ufactured such  matter,  and  emitted  it  to  the  light  of 
day.  Had  Teufelsdrockh  also  a  father  and  mother  ; 
did  he,  at  one  time,  wear  drivel-bibs,  and  live  on  spoon- 
meat?  Did  he  ever,  in  rapture  and  tears,  clasp  a 
friend's  bosom  to  his  ;  looks  he  also  wistfully  into  the 
long  burial-aisle  of  the  Past,  where  only  winds,  and 
their  low  harsh  moan,  give  inarticulate  answer?  Has 
he  fought  duels  ; — good  Heaven  !  how  did  he  comport 
himself  when  in  Love  ?  By  what  singular  stair-steps, 
in  short,  and  subterranean  passages,  and  sloughs  of 
Despair,  and  steep  Pisgah  hills,  has  he  reached  this 
wonderful  prophetic  Hebron  (a  true  Old-Clothes  Jewry) 
where  he  now  dwells  ? 

"To  all  these  natural  questions  the  voice  of  public 
History  is  as  yet  silent.  Certain  only  that  he  has  been, 
and  is,  a  Pilgrim,  and  Traveller  from  a  far  Country  ; 
more  or  less  footsore  and  travel-soiled  ;  has  parted  with 
road-companions  ;  fallen  among  thieves,  been  poisoned 
by  bad  cookery,  blistered  with  bugbites  ;  nevertheless, 
at  every  stage  (for  they  have  let  him  pass),  has  had 
the  Bill  to  discharge.  But  the  whole  particulars  of  his 
Route,  his  Weather-observations,  the  picturesque 
Sketches  he  took,  though  all  regularly  jotted  down  (in 
indelible  sympathetic-ink  by  an  invisible  interior  Pen- 
man), are  these  nowhere  forthcoming?  Perhaps  quite 
lost :  one  other  leaf  of  that  mighty  Volume  (of  human 
Memory)  left  to  fly  abroad,  unprinted,  unpublished, 
unbound  up,  as  waste  paper ;  and  to  rot,  the  sport  of 
rainy  winds  ? 

"No,  verehrtester  Herr  Herausgeber,  in  no  wise!  I 
here,  by  the  unexampled  favor  you  stand  in  with  our 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


79 


Sage,  send  not  a  Biography  only,  but  an  Autobi- 
ography :  at  least  the  materials  for  such  ;  wherefrom,  if 
I  misreckon  not,  your  perspicacity  will  draw  fullest  in- 
sight :  and  so  the  whole  Philosophy  and  Philosopher 
of  Clothes  will  stand  clear  to  the  wondering  eyes  of 
England,  nay  thence,  through  America,  through  Hin- 
dostan,  and  the  antipodal  New  Holland,  finally  con- 
quer (einnehmeri)  great  part  of  this  terrestrial  Planet  !  " 

And  now  let  the  sympathizing  reader  judge  of  our 
feeling  when,  in  place  of  this  same  Autobiography 
with  "fullest insight,"  we  find — Six  considerable  PAPER- 
BAGS,  carefully  sealed,  and  marked  successively,  in  gilt 
China-ink,  with  the  symbols  of  the  Six  southern  Zodia- 
cal Signs,  beginning  at  Libra  ;  in  the  inside  of  which 
sealed  Bags  lie  miscellaneous  masses  of  Sheets,  and 
oftener  Shreds  and  Snips,  written  in  Professor  Teufels- 
drockh's  scarce  legible  cursivschrift ;  and  treating  of  all 
imaginable  things  under  the  Zodiac  and  above  it,  but 
of  his  own  personal  history  only  at  rare  intervals,  and 
then  in  the  most  enigmatic  manner. 

Whole  fascicles  there  are,  wherein  the  Professor,  or, 
as  he  here,  speaking  in  the  third  person,  calls  himself, 
"the  Wanderer,"  is  not  once  named.  Then  again, 
amidst  what  seems  to  be  a  Metaphysico-theological 
Disquisition,  "Detached  Thoughts  on  the  Steam-en- 
gine," or,  "The  continued  Possibility  of  Prophecy," 
we  shall  meet  with  some  quite  private,  not  unimpor- 
tant Biographical  fact.  On  certain  sheets  stand  Dreams, 
authentic  or  not,  while  the  circumjacent  waking  Ac- 
tions are  omitted.  Anecdotes,  oftenest  without  date 
of  place  or  time,  fly  loosely  on  separate  slips,  like 
Sibylline  leaves.  Interspersed  also  are  long  purely 
Autobiographical  delineations ;  yet  without  connec- 
tion, without  recognizable  coherence  ;  so  unimportant, 


8o  SARTOR  RES  A  R  TVS. 

so  superfluously  minute,  they  almost  remind  us  of 
"P.  P.  Clerk  of  this  Parish."  Thus  does  the  famine  of 
intelligence  alternate  with  waste.  Selection,  order,  ap- 
pears to  be  unknown  to  the  Professor.  In  all  Bags  the 
same  imbroglio  ;  only  perhaps  in  the  Bag  Capricorn, 
and  those  near  it,  the  confusion  a  little  worse  con- 
founded. Close  by  a  rather  eloquent  Oration,  "  On  re- 
ceiving the  Doctor's-Hat,"  lie  wash-bills,  marked  bezahlt 
(settled).  His  Travels  are  indicated  by  the  Street-Ad- 
vertisements of  the  various  cities  he  has  visited  ;  of 
which  Street- Advertisements,  in  most  living  tongues, 
here  is  perhaps  the  completest  collection  extant. 

So  that  if  the  Clothes- Volume  itself  was  too  like  a 
Chaos,  we  have  now  instead  of  the  solar  Luminary 
that  should  still  it,  the  airy  Limbo  which  by  intermix- 
ture will  farther  volatilize  and  discompose  it  T  As  we 
shall  perhaps  see  it  our  duty  ultimately  to  deposit  these 
Six  Paper-Bags  in  the  British  Museum,  farther  descrip- 
tion, and  all  vituperation  of  them,  may  be  spared. 
Biography  or  Autobiography  of  Teufelsdrockh  there  is 
clearly  enough,  none  to  be  gleaned  here  :  at  most  some 
sketchy,  shadowy  fugitive  likeness  of  him  may,  by  un- 
heard-of efforts,  partly  of  intellect,  partly  of  imagination 
on  the  side  of  Editor  and  of  Reader,  rise  up  between 
them.  Only  as  a  gaseous-chaotic  Appendix  to  that 
aqueous-chaotic  Volume  can  the  contents  of  the  Six 
Bags  hover  round  us,  and  portions  thereof  be  incor- 
porated with  our  delineation  of  it. 

Daily  and  nightly  does  the  Editor  sit  (with  green 
spectacles)  deciphering  these  unimaginable  Documents 
from  their  perplexed  cursiv-schrift ;  collating  them  with 
the  almost  equally  unimaginable  Volume,  which  stands 
in  legible  print.  Over  such  a  universal  medley  of  high 
and  low,  of  hot,  cold,  moist  and  dry,  is  he  here  strug- 
gling (by  union  of  like  with  like,  which  is  Method)  to 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  8 1 

build  a  firm  Bridge  for  British  travellers.  Never  perhaps 
since  our  first  Bridge-builders,  Sin  and  Death,  built 
that  stupendous  Arch  from  Hell-gate  to  the  Earth,  did 
any  Pontifex,  or  Pontiff,  undertake  such  a  task  as  the 
present  Editor.  For  in  this  Arch  too,  leading,  as  we 
humbly  presume,  far  otherwards  than  that  grand  prim- 
eval one,  the  materials  are  to  be  fished-up  from  the 
weltering  deep,  and  down  from  the  simmering  air,  here 
one  mass,  there  another,  and  cunningly  cemented,  while 
the  elements  boil  beneath  :  nor  is  there  any  super- 
natural force  to  do  it  with  ;  but  simply  the  Diligence 
and  feeble  thinking  Faculty  of  an  English  Editor,  en- 
deavoring to  evolve  printed  Creation  out  of  a  German 
printed  and  written  Chaos,  wherein,  as  he  shoots  to 
and  fro  in  it,  gathering,  clutching,  piecing  the  Why  to 
the  far-distant  Wherefore,  his  whole  Faculty  and  Self 
are  like  to  be  swallowed  up. 

Patiently,  under  these  incessant  toils  and  agitations, 
does  the  Editor,  dismissing  all  anger,  see  his  otherwise 
robust  health  declining  ;  some  fraction  of  his  allotted 
natural  sleep  nightly  leaving  him,  and  little  but  an  in- 
flamed nervous-system  to  be  looked  for.  What  is  the 
use  of  health,  or  of  life,  if  not  to  do  some  work  there- 
with ?  And  what  work  nobler  than  transplanting  foreign 
Thought  into  the  barren  domestic  soil ;  except  indeed 
planting  Thought  of  your  own,  which  the  fewest  are 
privileged  to  do  ?  Wild  as  it  looks,  this  Philosophy  of 
Clothes,  can  we  ever  reach  its  real  meaning,  promises 
to  reveal  new-coming  Eras,  the  first  dim  rudiments  and 
already-budding  germs  of  a  nobler  Era,  in  Universal 
History.  Is  not  such  a  prize  worth  some  striving  ? 
Forward  with  us,  courageous  reader  ;  be  it  towards 
failure,  or  towards  success  1  The  latter  thou  sharest 
with  us  ;  the  former  also  is  not  all  our  own, 
6 


BOOK  SECOND. 


CHAPTER  I. 

GENESIS. 

IN  a  psychological  point  of  view,  it  is  perhaps  ques- 
tionable whether  from  birth  and  genealogy,  how  closely 
scrutinized  soever,  much  insight  is  to  be  gained.  Never- 
theless, as  in  every  phenomenon  the  Beginning  remains 
always  the  most  notable  moment ;  so,  with  regard  to 
any  great  man,  we  rest  not  till,  for  our  scientific  profit 
or  not,  the  whole  circumstances  of  his  first  appearance 
in  this  Planet,  and  what  manner  of  Public  Entry  he 
made,  are  with  utmost  completeness  rendered  manifest. 
To  the  Genesis  of  our  Clothes-Philosopher,  then,  be 
this  First  Chapter  consecrated.  Unhappily,  indeed,  he 
seems  to  be  of  quite  obscure  extraction  ;  uncertain,  we 
might  almost  say,  whether  of  any  :  so  that  this  Genesis 
of  his  can  properly  be  nothing  but  an  Exodus  (or  tran- 
sit out  of  Invisibility  into  Visibility)  ;  whereof  the  pre- 
liminary portion  is  nowhere  forthcoming. 

"  In  the  village  of  Entepfuhl,"  thus  writes  he,  in  the 
Bag  Libra,  on  various  Papers,  which  we  arrange  with 
difficulty,  "  dwelt  Andreas  Futteral  and  his  wife  ;  child- 
less, in  still  seclusion,  and  cheerful  though  now  verging 
towards  old  age.  Andreas  had  been  grenadier  Sergeant, 
and  even  regimental  Schoolmaster  under  Frederick 


SARTOR  RESARTUS,  83 

the  Great ;  but  now,  quitting  the  halbert  and  ferule  for 
the  spade  and  pruning-hook,  cultivated  a  little  Orchard, 
on  the  produce  of  which  he,  Cincinnatus-like,  lived  not 
without  dignity.  Fruits,  the  peach,  the  apple,  the 
grape,  with  other  varieties  came  in  their  season  ;  all 
which  Andreas  knew  how  to  sell :  on  evenings  hesmoked 
largely,  or  read  (as  beseemed  a  regimental  School- 
master) ,  and  talked  to  neighbors  that  would  listen  about 
the  Victory  of  Rossbach  ;  and  how  Fritz  the  Only  (der 
Einzige)  had  once  with  his  own  royal  lips  spoken  to 
him,  had  been  pleased  to  say,  when  Andreas  as  camp- 
sentinel  demanded  the  pass-word,  '  Schweig,  Hund 
(Peace,  hound)  ! '  before  any  of  his  staff-adjutants  could 
answer.  '  Das  nenri  ich  mir  einen  Konig.  There  is 
what  I  call  a  King,'  would  Andreas  exclaim  :  '  but  the 
smoke  of  Kunersdorf  was  still  smarting  his  eyes.' 

"  Gretchen,  the  housewife,  won  like  Desdemona  by 
the  deeds  rather  than  the  looks  of  her  now  veteran 
.Othello,  lived  not  in  altogether  military  subordination  ; 
for,  as  Andreas  said,  '  the  womankind  will  not  drill 
(wer  kann  die  Weiberchen  dressireri) :  '  nevertheless  she 
at  heart  loved  him  both  for  valor  and  wisdom  ;  to  her 
a  Prussian  grenadier  Sergeant  and  Regiment's  School- 
master was  little  other  than  a  Cicero  and  Cid  :  what 
you  see,  yet  cannot  see  over,  is  as  good  as  infinite. 
Nay,  was  not  Andreas  in  very  deed  a  man  -of  order, 
courage,  downrightness  (Geradheif)  ;  that  understood 
Biisching's  Geography,  had  been  in  the  victory  of  Ross- 
bach,  and  left  for  dead  in  the  camisade  of  Hochkirch  ? 
The  good  Gretchen,  for  all  her  fretting,  watched  over 
him  and  hovered  round  him  as  only  a  true  housemother 
can  :  assiduously  she  cooked  and  sewed  and  scoured 
for  him  ;  so  that  not  only  his  old  regimental  sword  and 
grenadier-cap,  but  the  whole  habitation  and  environment 


84  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

where  on  pegs  of  honor  they  hung,  looked  ever  trim 
and  gay  :  a  roomy  painted  Cottage,  enbowered  in  fruit- 
trees,  and  forest-trees,  evergreens  and  honeysuckles  ; 
rising  many-colored  from  amid  shaven  grass-plots, 
flowers  struggling-in  through  the  very  windows  ;  under 
its  long  projecting  eaves  nothing  but  garden-tools  in 
methodic  piles  (to  screen  them  from  rain),  and  seats 
where,  especially  on  summer  nights,  a  King  might  have 
wished  to  sit  and  smoke,  and  call  it  his.  Such  ^.Bauer- 
gut  (Copyhold)  hadGretchen  given  her  veteran  ;  whose 
sinewy  arms,  and  long-disused  gardening  talent,  had 
made  it  what  you  saw. 

"Into  this  umbrageous  Man's-nest,  one  meek  yellow 
evening  or  dusk,  when  the  Sun,  hidden  indeed  from  ter- 
restrial Entepfuhl,  did  nevertheless  journey  visible  and 
radiant  along  the  celestial  Balance  (Libra)  it  was  that 
a  Stranger  of  reverend  aspect  entered,  and,  with  grave 
salutation,  stood  before  the  two  rather  astonished  house- 
mates. He  was  close-muffled  in  a  wide  mantle  ;  which 
without  farther  parley  unfolding,  he  deposited  there- 
from what  seemed  some  Basket,  overhung  with  green 
Persian  silk  ;  saying  only  :  Ihr  lieben  Leufe,  hierbringe 
ein  unschdtzbares  Verleihen;  nehmt  es  inaller  Achi,  sorg- 
faltigst  beniilzl  es  :  mil  hohem  Lohn  oder  wohl  mil 
schweren  Zinsen,  wird's  einsl  zuriickgefordert.  '  Good 
Christian  people  here  lies  for  you  an  invaluable  Loan  ; 
take  all  heed  thereof,  in  all  carefulness  employ  it  :  with 
high  recompense,  or  else  with  heavy  penalty,  will  it  one 
day  be  required  back.'  Uttering  which  singular  words, 
in  a  clear,  bell-like,  forever  memorable  tone,  the  Stran- 
ger gracefully  withdrew  ;  and  before  Andreas  or  his 
wife,  gazing  in  expectant  wonder,  had  time  to  fashion 
either  question  or  answer,  was  clean  gone.  Neither 
out  of  doors  could  aught  of  him  be  seen  or  heard  ;  he 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  85 

had  vanished  in  the  thickets,  in  the  dusk  ;  the  Orchard- 
gate  stood  quietly  closed  :  the  Stranger  was  gone  once 
and  always.  So  sudden  had  the  whole  transaction  been, 
in  the  autumn  stillness  and  twilight,  so  gentle,  noiseless, 
that  the  Futterals  could  have  fancied  it  all  a  trick  of 
Imagination,  or  some  visit  from  an  authentic  Spirit. 
Only  that  the  green-silk  Basket,  such  as  neither 
Imagination  nor  authentic  Spirits  are  wont  to  carry, 
still  stood  visible  and  tangible  on  their  little  parlor-table. 
Towards  this  the  astonished  couple,  now  with  lit  can- 
dle, hastily  turned  their  attention.  Lifting  the  green 
veil,  to  see  what  invaluable  it  hid,  they  descried  there, 
amid  down  and  rich  white  wrappages,  no  Pitt  Diamond 
or  Hapsburg  Regalia,  but,  in  the  softest  sleep,  a  little 
red-colored  Infant  !  Beside  it,  lay  a  roll  of  gold  Fried- 
richs,  the  exact  amount  of  which  was  never  publicly 
known  ;  also  a  Taufschein  (baptismal  certificate),  where- 
in unfortunately  nothing  but  the  Name  was  decipher- 
able ;  other  document  or  indication  none  whatever. 

"  To  wonder  and  conjecture  was  unavailing,  then 
and  always  thenceforth.  Nowhere  in  Entepfuhl,  on  the 
morrow  or  next  day,  did  tidings  transpire  of  any 
such  figure  as  the  Stranger  ;  nor  could  the  Traveller 
who  had  passed  through  the  neighboring  Town  in 
coach-and-four,  be  connected  with  this  Apparition 
except  in  the  way  of  gratuitous  surmise.  Meanwhile, 
for  Andreas  and  his  wife,  the  grand  practical  problem 
was  :  What  to  do  with  this  little  sleeping  red-colored 
Infant  ?  Amid  amazements  and  curiosities,  which  had 
to  die  away  without  external  satisfying,  they  resolved, 
as  in  such  circumstances  charitable  prudent  people 
needs  must,  on  nursing  it,  though  with  spoon-meat, 
into  whiteness,  and  if  possible  into  manhood.  The 
Heavens  smiled  on  their  endeavor :  thus  has  that  same 


86  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

mysterious  Individual  ever  since  had  a  status  for  him- 
self  in  this  visible  Universe,  some  modicum  of  victual 
and  lodging  and  parade-ground ;  and  now  expanded 
in  bulk,  faculty  and  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  he, 
as  HERR  DIOGENES  TEUFELSDROCKH,  professes  or  is  ready 
to  profess,  perhaps  not  altogether  without  effect,  in 
the  new  University  of  Weissnichtwo,  the  new  Science 
of  Things  in  General. " 

Our  Philosopher  declares  here,  as  indeed  we  should 
"think  he  well  might,  that  these  facts,  first  communicated, 
by  the  good  Gretchen  Futteral,  in  his  twelfth  year, 
"  produced  on  the  boyish  heart  and  fancy  a  quite  in- 
delible impression.  Who  this  reverend  Personage,"  he 
says,  "that  glided  into  the  Orchard  Cottage  when  the 
Sun  was  in  Libra,  and  then,  as  on  spirit's  wings,  glided 
out  again,  might  be?  An  inexpressible  desire,  full  of 
love  and  of  sadness,  has  often  since  struggled  within 
me  to  shape  an  answer.  Ever,  in  my  distresses  and 
my  loneliness,  has  Fantasy  turned,  full  of  longing  (sehn- 
suchtsvoll),  to  that  unknown  Father,  who  perhaps  far 
from  me,  perhaps  near,  either  way  invisible,  might 
have  taken  me  to  his  paternal  bosom,  there  to  lie 
screened  from  many  a  woe.  Thou  beloved  Father, 
dost  thou  still,  shut  out  from  me  only  by  thin  penetrable 
curtains  of  earthly  Space,  wend  to  and  fro  among  the 
crowd  of  the  living  ?  Or  art  thou  hidden  by  those  far 
thicker  curtains  of  the  Everlasting  Night,  or  rather  of 
the  Everlasting  Day,  through  which  my  mortal  eye  and 
outstretched  arms  need  not  strive  to  reach  ?  Alas,  I 
know  not,  and  in  vain  vex  myself  to  know.  More 
than  once,  heart-deluded,  have  I  taken  for  thee  this 
and  the  other  noble-looking  Stranger ;  and  approached 
him  wistfully,  with  infinite  regard  ;  but  he  too  had  to 
repel  me,  he  too  was  not  thou. 


SARTOR  RRSARTVS.  87 

"And  yet,  O  Man  born  of  Woman,"  cries  the  Auto- 
biographer,  with  one  of  his  sudden  whirls,  "wherein 
is  my  case  peculiar?  Hadst  thou,  any  more  than  I,  a 
Father  whom  thou  knowest?  The  Andreas  and  Gret- 
chen,  or  the  Adam  and  Eve,  who  led  thee  into  Life, 
and  for  a  time  suckled  and  pap-fed  thee  there,  whom 
thounamest  Father  and  Mother;  these  were,  like  mine, 
but  thy  nursing-father  and  nursing-mother  :  thy  true 
Beginning  and  Father  is  in  Heaven,  whom  with  the 
bodily  eye  thou  shalt  never  behold,  but  only  with  the 
spiritual. " 

"The  little  green  veil,"  adds  he,  among  much  simi- 
lar moralizing,  and  embroiled  discoursing,  "  I  yet 
keep ;  still  more  inseparably  the  Name,  Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh.  From  the  veil  can  nothing  be  inferred  : 
a  piece  of  now  quite  faded  Persian  silk,  like  thousands 
of  others.  On  the  Name  I  have  many  times  meditated 
and  conjectured  ;  but  neither  in  this  lay  there  any  clew. 
That  it  was  my  unknown  Father's  name  I  must  hesi- 
tate to  believe.  To  no  purpose  have  I  searched  through 
all  the  Herald's  Books,  in  and  without  the  German  Em- 
pire, and  through  all  manner  of  Subscriber-Lists  (Prd- 
numeranten),  Militia-Rolls,  and  other  Name-catalogues; 
extraordinary  names  as  we  have  in  Germany,  the 
name  Teufelsdrockh,  except  as  appended  to  my  own 
person,  nowhere  occurs.  Again,  what  may  the  un- 
christian rather  than  Christian  "Diogenes"  mean  ?  Did 
that  reverend  Basket-bearer  intend,  by  such  designa- 
tion, to  shadow-forth  my  future  destiny,  or  his  own 
present  malign  humor  ?  Perhaps  the  latter,  perhaps 
both.  Thou  ill-starred  Parent,  who  like  an  Ostrich 
hadst  to  leave  thy  ill-starred  offspring  to  be  hatched 
into  self-support  by  the  mere  sky-influences  of  Chance, 
can  thy  pilgrimage  have  been  a  smooth  one  ?  Beset 


88  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

by  Misfortune  thou  doubtless  hast  been  ;  or  indeed  by 
the  worst  figure  of  Misfortune,  by  Misconduct.  Often 
have  I  fancied  how,  in  thy  hard  life-battle,  thou  wert 
shot  at,  and  slung  at,  wounded,  hand-fettered,  ham- 
strung, browbeaten  and  bedevilled  by  the  Time-Spirit 
(Zeitgeist)  in  thyself  and  others,  till  the  good  soul  first 
given  thee  was  seared  into  grim  rage  ;  and  thou  hadst 
nothing  for  it  but  to  leave  in  me  an  indignant  appeal 
to  the  Future,  and  living  speaking  Protest  against  the 
Devil,  as  that  same  Spirit  not  of  the  Time  only,  but  of 
Time  itself,  is  well  named  !  Which  Appeal  and  Protest, 
may  I  now  modestly  add,  was  not  perhaps  quite  lost 
in  air. 

"For  indeed,  as  Walter  Shandy  often  insisted,  there  is 
much,  nay  almost  all,  in  Names.  The  Name  is  the 
earliest  Garment  you  wrap  round  the  earth-visiting  ME; 
to  which  it  thenceforth  cleaves,  more  tenaciously  (for 
there  are  Names  that  have  lasted  nigh  thirty  centuries) 
than  the  very  skin.  And  now  from  without,  what 
mystic  influences  does  it  not  send  inwards,  even  to 
the  centre  ;  especially  in  those  plastic  first-times,  when 
the  whole  soul  is  yet  infantine,  soft,  and  the  invisible 
seedgrain  will  grow  to  be  an  all  overshadowing  tree  ! 
Names  ?  Could  I  unfold  the  influence  of  Names, 
which  are  the  most  important  of  all  Clothings,  I  were 
a  second  greater  Trismegistus.  Not  only  all  common 
Speech,  but  Science,  Poetry  itself,  is  no  other,  if  thou 
consider  it,  than  a  right  Naming.  Adam's  first  task 
was  giving  names  to  natural  Appearances  :  What  is 
ours  still  but  a  continuation  of  the  same;  be  the  Appear- 
ances exotic-vegetable,  organic,  mechanic,  stars,  or 
starry  movements  (as  in  Science) ;  or  (as  in  Poetry) 
passions,  virtues,  calamities,  God-attributes,  Gods  ? — 
In  a  very  plain  sense  the  Proverb  says,  Call  one  a  thief, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  89 

and  he  will  steal;  in  an  almost  similar  sense  may  we 
not  perhaps  say,  Call  one  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  and 
he  will  open  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes?" 

"Meanwhile  the  incipient  Diogenes,  like  others,  all 
ignorant  of  his  Why,  his  How,  or  Whereabout,  was 
opening  his  eyes  to  the  kind  Light  ;  sprawling-out  his 
ten  ringers  and  toes  ;  listening,  tasting,  feeling;  in  a 
word,  by  all  his  Five  Senses,  still  more  by  his  Sixth 
Sense  of  Hunger,  and  a  whole  infinitude  of  inward, 
spiritual,  half-awakened  Senses,  endeavoring  daily  to 
acquire  for  himself  some  knowledge  of  this  strange 
Universe  where  he  had  arrived,  be  his  task  therein 
what  it  might.  Infinite  was  his  progress;  thus  in  some 
fifteen  months,  he  could  perform  the  miracle  of — 
Speech  !  To  breed  a  fresh  Soul,  is  it  not  like  brooding 
a  fresh  (celestial)  Egg ;  wherein  as  yet  all  is  formless, 
powerless  ;  yet  by  degrees  organic  elements  and  fibres 
shoot  through  the  watery  albumen  ;  and  out  of  vague 
Sensation  grows  Thought,  grows  Fantasy  and  Force, 
and  we  have  Philosophies,  Dynasties,  nay  Poetries  and 
Religions  ! 

"Young  Diogenes,  or  rather  young  Gneschen,  for 
by  such  diminutive  had  they  in  their  fondness  namec^ 
him,  travelled  forward  to  those  high  consummations, 
by  quick  yet  easy  stages.  The  Futterals,  to  avoid  vain 
talk,  and  moreover  keep  the  roll  of  gold  Friedrichs  safe, 
gave-out  that  he  was  a  grand-nephew  ;  the  orphan  of 
some  sister's  daughter,  suddenly  deceased,  in  Andreas's 
distant  Prussian  birthland  ;  of  whom,  as  of  her  indigent 
sorrowing  widower,  little  enough  was  known  at  En- 
tepfuhl.  Heedless  of  all  which,  the  Nursling  took  to 
his  spoon-meat,  and  throve.  I  have  heard  him  noted 
as  a  still  infant,  that  kept  his  mind  much  to  himself ; 


90  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

above  all,  that  seldom  or  never  cried.  He  already 
felt  that  time  was  precious  ;  that  he  had  other  work 
cut-out  for  him  than  whimpering. " 

Such,  after  utmost  painful  search  and  collation 
among  these  miscellaneous  Paper-masses,  is  all  the 
notice  we  can  gather  of  Herr  Teufelsdrockh's  gene- 
alogy. More  imperfect,  more  enigmatic  it  can  seem 
to  few  readers  than  to  us.  The  Professor,  in  whom 
truly  we  more  and  more  discern  a  certain  satirical  turn, 
and  deep  under-currents  of  roguish  whim,  for  the  pres- 
ent stands  pledged  in  honor,  so  we  will  not  doubt 
him  :  but  seems  it  not  conceivable  that,  by  the  good 
"  Gretchen  Futteral,"  or  some  other  perhaps  interested 
party,  he  has  himself  been  deceived?  Should  these 
sheets,  translated  or  not,  ever  reach  the  Entepfuhl  Cir- 
culating Library,  some  cultivated  native  of  that  district 
might  feel  called  to  afford  explanation.  Nay,  since 
Books,  like  invisible  scouts,  permeate  the  whole  habit- 
able globe,  and  Timbuctoo  itself  is  not  safe  from  British 
Literature,  may  not  some  Copy  find  out  even  the  mys- 
terious basket-bearing  Stranger,  who  in  a  state  of  ex- 
treme senility  perhaps  still  exists  ;  and  gently  force 
even  him  to  disclose  himself;  to  claim  openly  a  son, 
in  whom  any  father  may  feel  pride  ? 


&ESARTUS. 


CHAPTER   II. 

IDYLLIC. 

**  HAPPY  season  of  Childhood  !  "  exclaims  Teufels- 
droekh  :  "Kind  Nature,  that  art  to  all  a  bountiful 
mother "  that  visitest  the  poor  man's  hut  with  auroral 
radiance ;  and  for  thy  Nursling  hast  provided  a  soft 
swathing  of  Love  and  infinite  Hope,  wherein  he  waxes 
and  slumbers,  danced  round  (umgaukelf)  by  sweetest 
Dreams  !  If  the  paternal  Cottage  still  shuts  us  in,  its 
roof  still  screens  us  ;  with  a  Father  we  have  as  yet  a 
prophet,  priest  and  king,  and  an  Obedience  that  makes 
us  free.  The  young  spirit  has  awakened  out  of  Eter- 
nity, and  knows  not  what  we  mean  by  Time  ;  as  yet 
Time  is  no  fast-hurrying  stream,  but  a  sportful  sun- 
lit ocean ;  years  to  the  chiJd  are  as  ages  :  ah !  the 
secret  of  Vicissitude,  of  that  s)ower  or  quicker  decay 
and  ceaseless  down-rushing  of  the  universal  World- 
fabric,  from  the  granite  mountain  to  the  man  or  day- 
moth,  is  yet  unknown  ;  and  in  a  motionless  Universe, 
we  taste,  what  afterwards  in  this  quick-whirling  Uni- 
verse is  forever  denied  us,  the  balm  of  Rest  Sleep  on, 
thou  fair  Child,  for  thy  long  rough  journey  is  at  hand  ! 
A  little  while,  and  thou  too  shalt  sleep  no  more,  but 
thy  very  dreams  shall  be  mimic  battles  ;  thou  too,  with 
old  Arnauld,  wilt  have  to  say  in  stern  patience  :  '  Rest  ? 
Rest  ?  Shall  I  not  have  all  Eternity  to  rest  in  ? '  Celes- 
tial Nepenthe  !  though  a  Pyrrhus  conquer  empires,  and 


92  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

an  Alexander  sack  the  world,  he  finds  thee  not ;  and 
thou  hast  once  fallen  gently,  of  thy  own  accord,  on  the 
eyelids,  on  the  heart  of  every  mother's  child.  For  as 
yet,  sleep  and  waking  are  one  :  the  fair  Life-garden 
rustles  infinite  around,  and  everywhere  is  dewy  fra- 
grance, and  the  building  of  Hope  ;which  budding,  if  in 
youth,  too  frostnipt,  it  grow  to  flowers,  will  in  manhood 
yield  no  fruit,  but  a  prickly,  bitter-rinded  stone-fruit, 
of  which  the  fewest  can  find  the  kernel. " 

In  such  rose-colored  light  does  our  Professor,  as 
Poets  are  wont,  look  back  on  his  childhood ;  the  his- 
torical details  of  which  (to  say  nothing  of  much  other 
vague  oratorical  matter)  he  accordingly  dwells  on  with 
an  almost  wearisome  minuteness.  We  hear  of  Entep- 
fuhl  standing  "in  trustful  derangement"  among  the 
woody  slopes  ;  the  paternal  Orchard  flanking  it  as  ex- 
treme outpost  from  below  ;  the  little  Kuhbach  gushing 
kindly  by,  among  beech-rows,  through  river  after  river, 
into  the  Donau,  into  the  Black  Sea,  into  the  Atmosphere 
and  Universe;  and  how  "the  brave  old  Linden," 
stretching  like  a  parasol  of  twenty  ells  in  radius,  over- 
topping all  other  rows  and  clumps,  towered-up  from 
the  central  Agora  and  Campus  Martins  of  the  Village, 
like  its  Sacred  Tree  ;  and  how  the  old  men  sat  talking 
under  its  shadow  (Gneschen  often  greedily  listening), 
and  the  wearied  laborers  reclined,  and  the  unwearied 
children  sported,  and  the  young  men  and  maidens 
often  danced  to  flute-music.  "Glorious  summer  twi- 
light," cries  Teufelsdrockh,  "when  the  Sun,  like  a 
proud  Conqueror  and  Imperial  Taskmaster,  turned  his 
back,  with  his  gold-purple  emblazonry,  and  all  his  fire- 
clad  body-guard  (of  Prismatic  Colors);  and  the  tired 
brickmakers  of  this  clay  Earth  might  steal  a  little  frolic, 
and  those  few  meek  Stars  would  not  tell  of  them  1 " 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  93 

Then  we  have  long  details  of  the  Weinlesen  (Vint- 
age), the  Harvest-Home,  Christmas,  and  so  forth ; 
with  a  whole  eycle  of  the  Entepfuhl  Children's-games, 
differing  apparently  by  mere  superficial  shades  from 
those  of  other  countries.  Concerning  all  which,  we 
shall  here,  for  obvious  reasons,  say  nothing.  What 
cares  the  world  for  our  as  yet  miniature  Philosopher's 
achievements  under  that  "brave  old  Linden?"  Or 
even  where  is  the  use  of  such  practical  reflections  as 
the  following?  "In  all  the  sports  of  Children,  were 
it  only  in  their  wanton  breakage  and  defacements,  you 
shall  discern  a  creative  instinct  (schaffenden  Tn'eb)  : 
the  Mankin  feels  that  he  is  a  born  Man,  that  his  voca- 
tion is  to  work.  The  choicest  present  you  can  make 
him  ;s  a  Tool  ;  be  it  knife  or  pen-gun,  for  construction 
or  for  destruction  ;  either  way  it  is  for  Work,  for  Change. 
In  gregarious  sports  of  skill  or  strength,  the  Boy  trains 
himself  to  Co-operation,  for  war  t>r  peace,  as  gov- 
ernor or  governed  :  the  little  Maid  again,  provident 
of  her  domestic  destiny,  takes  with  preference  to 
Dolls." 

Perhaps,  however,  we  may  give  this  anecdote,  con- 
sidering who  it  is  that  relates  it :  "  My  first  short-clothes 
were  of  yellow  serge  ;  or  rather,  I  should  say,  my  first 
short-cloth,  for  the  vesture  was  one  and  indivisible, 
reaching  from  neck  to  ankle,  a  mere  body  with  four 
limbs  :  of  which  fashion  how  little  could  I  then  divine 
the  architectural,  how  much  less  the  moral  signifi- 
cance !  " 

More  graceful  is  the  following  little  picture:  "On 
fine  evenings  I  was  wont  to  carry-forth  my  supper 
(bread-crumb  boiled  in  milk),  and  eat  it  out-of-doors. 
On  the  coping  of  the  Orchard-wall,  which  I  could 
reach  by  climbing,  or  still  more  easily  if  Father  Andreas 


94  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

would  set-up  the  pruning-ladder,  my  porringer  was 
placed  :  there,  many  a  sunset,  have  I,  looking  at  the 
distant  western  Mountains,  consumed,  not  without 
relish,  my  evening  meal.  Those  hues  of  gold  and 
azure,  that  hush  of  World's  expectation  as  Day  died, 
were  still  a  Hebrew  Speech  for  me ;  nevertheless  I  was 
looking  at  the  fair  illuminated  Letters,  and  had  an  eye 
for  their  gilding. " 

With  ' '  the  little  one's  friendship  for  cattle  and  poultry  " 
we  shall  not  much  intermeddle.  It  may  be  that  here- 
by he  acquired  a  "  certain  deeper  sympathy  with  ani- 
mated Nature :  "  but  when,  we  would  ask,  saw  any 
man,  in  a  collection  of  Biographical  Documents,  such 
apiece  as  this  :  "Impressive  enough  (bedeutungsvoll) 
was  it  to  hear,  in  early  morning,  the  Swineherd's  horn  ; 
and  know  that  so  many  hungry  happy  quadrupeds 
were,  on  all  sides,  starting  in  hot  haste  to  join  him,  for 
breakfast  on  the  Heath.  Or  to  see  them  at  eventide, 
all  marching-in  again,  with  short  squeak,  almost  in 
military  order ;  and  each,  topographically  correct, 
trotting-off  in  succession  to  the  right  or  left,  through 
its  own  lane,  to  its  own  dwelling ;  till  old  Kunz,  at  the 
Village-head,  now  left  alone,  blew  his  last  blast,  and  re- 
tired for  the  night.  We  are  wont  to  love  the  Hog  chiefly 
in  the  form  of  Ham  ;  yet  did  not  these  bristly  thick- 
skinned  beings  here  manifest  intelligence,  perhaps 
humor  of  character ;  at  any  rate,  a  touching,  trustful 
submissiveness  to  Man, — who,  were  he  but  a  Swineherd, 
in  darned  gabardine,  and  leather  breeches  more  resem- 
bling slate  or  discolored-tin  breeches,  is  still  the  Hier- 
arch  of  this  lower  world  ?  " 

It  is  maintained,  by  Helvetius  and  his  set,  that  an 
infant  of  genius  is  quite  the  same  as  any  other  infant, 
only  that  certain  surprisingly  favorable  influences  ag- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  95 

company  him  through  life,  especially  through  childhood, 
and  expand  him,  while  others  lie  closefolded  and  con- 
tinue dunces.  Herein,  say  they,  consists  the  whole 
difference  between  an  inspired  Prophet  and  a  double- 
barrelled  Game-preserver  :  the  inner  man  of  the  one 
has  been  fostered  into  generous  development ;  that  of 
the  other,  crushed-down  perhaps  by  vigor  of  animal 
digestion,  and  the  like,  has  exuded  and  evaporated,  or 
at  best  sleeps  now  irresuscitably  stagnant  at  the  bottom 
of  his  stomach.  "  With  which  opinion,"  cries  Teufels- 
drockh,  ' '  I  should  as  soon  agree  as  with  this  other, 
that  an  acorn  might,  by  favorable  or  unfavorable  in- 
fluences of  soil  and  climate,  be  nursed  into  a  cabbage, 
or  the  cabbage-seed  into  an  oak. 

"Nevertheless,"  continues  he,  "  I  too  acknowledge 
the  ail-but  omnipotence  of  early  culture  and  nurture  : 
hereby  we  have  either  a  doddered  dwarf  bush,  or  a 
high-towering,  wide-shadowing  tree  ;  either  a  sick  yel- 
low cabbage,  or  an  edible  luxuriant  green  one.  Of  a 
truth,  it  is  the  duty  of  all  men,  especially  of  all  philos- 
ophers, to  note-down  with  accuracy  the  characteristic 
circumstances  of  their  Education,  what  furthered,  what 
hindered,  what  in  any  way  modified  it  :  to  which  duty, 
nowadays  so  pressing  for  many  a  German  Autobi- 
ographer,  I  also  zealously  address  myself." — Thou 
rogue  !  Is  it  by  short-clothes  of  yellow"  serge,  and 
swineherd  horns,  that  an  infant  of  genius  is  educated? 
And  yet,  as  usual,  it  ever  remains  doubtful  whether  he 
is  laughing  in  his  sleeve  at  these  Autobiographical  times 
of  ours,  or  writing  from  the  abundance  of  his  own  fond 
ineptitude.  For  he  continues:  "If  among  the  ever- 
streaming  currents  of  Sights,  Hearings,  Feelings  for 
Pain  or  Pleasure,  whereby,  as  in.  a  Magic  Hall,  young 
Gneschen  went  about  environed,  I  might  venture  to 


96  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

select  and  specify,  perhaps  these  following  were  also 
of  the  number  : 

"Doubtless,  as  childish  sports  call  forth  Intellect, 
Activity,  so  the  young  creature's  Imagination  was  stirred 
up,  and  a  Historical  tendency  given  him  by  the  narra- 
tive habits  of  Father  Andreas ;  who,  with  his  battle- 
reminiscences,  and  gray  austere  yet  hearty  patriarchal 
aspect,  could  not  but  appear  another  Ulysses  and 
'  much-enduring  Man. '  Eagerly  I  hung  upon  his  tales, 
when  listening  neighbors  enlivened  the  hearth;  from 
these  perils  and  these  travels,  wild  and  far  almost  as 
Hades  itself,  a  dim  world  of  Adventure  expanded  itself 
within  me.  Incalculable  also  was  the  knowledge  I  ac- 
quired in  standing  by  the  Old  Men  under  the  Linden- 
tree  :  the  whole  of  Immensity  was  yet  new  to  me  ;  and 
had  not  these  reverend  seniors,  talkative  enough,  been 
employed  in  partial  surveys  thereof  for  nigh  fourscore 
years?  With  amazement  I  began  to  discover  that 
Entepfuhl  stood  in  the  middle  of  a  Country,  of  a  World  ; 
that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  History,  as  Biography  ; 
to  which  I  also,  one  day,  by  hand  and  tongue,  might 
contribute. 

"  In  a  like  sense  worked  the  Poslwagen  (Stage-coach), 
which,  slow-rolling  under  its  mountains  of  men  and 
luggage,  wended  through  our  Village  :  northwards, 
truly,  in  the  dead  of  night ;  yet  southwards  visibly  at 
eventide.  Not  till  my  eighth  year  did  I  reflect  that  this 
Postwagen  could  be  other  than  some  terrestrial  Moon, 
rising  and  setting  by  mere  Law  of  Nature,  like  the 
heavenly  one ;  that  it  came  on  made  highways,  from 
far  cities  towards  far  cities ;  weaving  them  like  a  mon- 
strous shuttle  into  closer  and  closer  union.  It  was 
then  that,  independently  of  Schiller's  Wilhelm  Tell,  I 
made  this  not  quite  insignificant  reflection  (so  true  also 


SARTOR  RESA.RTUS.  97 

in  spiritual  things)  :     Any  road,  this  simple  Enlepfuhl 
road,  will  lead  you  to  the  end  of  the  world  ! 

"  Why  mention  our  Swallows,  which,  out  of  far  Africa, 
as  I  learned,  threading  their  way  over  seas  and  mount- 
ains, corporate  cities  and  belligerent  nations,  yearly 
found  themselves,  with  the  month  of  May,  snug-lodged 
in  our  Cottage  Lobby  ?  The  hospitable  Father  (for 
cleanliness'  sake)  had  fixed  a  little  bracket  plumb  under 
their  nest  :  there  they  built,  and  caught  flies,  and 
twittered,  and  bred ;  and  all,  I  chiefly,  from  the  heart 
loved  them.  Bright,  nimble  creatures,  who  taught  you 
the  mason-craft ;  nay.  stranger  still,  gave  you  a  masonic 
incorporation,  almost  social  police  ?  For  if,  by  ill 
chance,  and  when  time  pressed,  your  House  fell,  have 
I  not  seen  five  neighborly  Helpers  appear  next  day  ; 
and  swashing  to  and  fro,  with  animated,  loud,  long- 
drawn  chirpings,  and  activity  almost  superhirundine, 
complete  it  again  before  nightfall  ? 

"  But  undoubtedly  the  grand  summary  of  Entepfuhl 
child's-culture,  where  as  in  a  funnel  its  manifold  in- 
fluences were  concentrated  and  simultaneously  poured- 
down  on  us,  was  the  annual  Cattle-fair.  Here,  assem- 
bling from  all  the  four  winds,  came  the  elements  of  an 
unspeakable  hurlyburly.  Nutbrown  maids  and  nut- 
brown  men,  all  clear-washed,  loud-laughing,  bedizened 
and  beribanded ;  who  came  for  dancing,  for  treating, 
and  if  possible,  for  happiness.  Topbooted  Graziers  from 
the  North ;  Swiss  Brokers,  Italian  Drovers,  also  top- 
booted,  from  the  South  ;  these  with  their  subalterns  in 
leather  jerkins,  leather  skullcaps,  and  long  oxgoads  ; 
shouting  in  half-articulate  speech,  amid  the  inarticu- 
late barking  and  bellowing.  Apart  stood  Potters  from 
far  Saxony,  with  their  crockery  in  fair  rows  ;  Ntirnberg 
Pedlers,  in  booths  that  to  me  seemed  richer  than  Ormus 
7 


98  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

bazaars  ;  Showmen  from  the  Lago  Maggiore  ;  detach- 
ments of  the  Wiener  Schub  (Offscourings  of  Vienna) 
vociferously  superintending  games  of  chance.  Ballad- 
singers  brayed,  Auctioneers  grew  hoarse  ;  cheap  New 
Wine  (heurtger)  flowed  like  water,  still  worse  confound- 
ing the  confusion  ;  and  high  over  all,  vaulted,  in  ground- 
and-lofty  tumbling,  a  particolored  Merry- Andrew,  like 
the  genius  of  the  place  and  of  Life  itself. 

"Thus  encircled  by  the  mystery  of  Existence  ;  under 
the  deep  heavenly  Firmament ;  waited-on  by  the  four 
golden  Seasons,  with  their  vicissitudes  of  contribution, 
for  even  grim  Winter  brought  its  skating-matches  and 
shooting-matches,  its  snow-storms  and  Christmas- 
carols, — did  the  Child  sit  and  learn.  These  things  were 
the  Alphabet,  whereby  in  aftertime  he  was  to  syllable 
and  partly  read  the  grand  Volume  of  the  World  :  what 
matters  it  whether  such  Alphabet  be  in  large  gilt  letters 
or  in  small  ungilt  ones,  so  you  have  an  eye  to  read  it  ? 
For  Gneschen,  eager  to  learn,  the  very  act  of  looking 
thereon  was  a  blessedness  that  gilded  all  :  his  exist- 
ence was  a  bright,  soft  element  of  Joy  ;  out  of  which, 
as  in  Prospero's  Island,  wonder  after  wonder  bodied 
itself  forth,  to  teach  by  charming. 

"Nevertheless,  I  were  but  a  vain  dreamer  to  say, 
that  even  then  my  felicity  was  perfect.  I  had,  once 
for  all,  come  down  from  Heaven  into  the  Earth. 
Among  the  rainbow  colors  that  glowed  on  my  horizon, 
lay  even  in  childhood  a  dark  ring  of  Care,  as  yet  no 
thicker  than  a  thread,  and  often  quite  overshone  ;  yet 
always  it  reappeared,  nay  ever  waxing  broader  and 
broader ;  till  in  after-years  it  almost  over-shadowed 
my  whole  canopy,  and  threatened  to  ingulf  me  in  final 
night.  It  was  the  ring  of  Necessity  whereby  we  are 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


99 


all  begirt ;  happy  he  for  whom  a  kind  heavenly  Sun 
brightens  it  into  a  ring  of  Duty,  and  plays  round  it  with 
beautiful  prismatic  diffractions  ;  yet  ever,  as  basis  and 
as  bourn  for  our  whole  being,  it  is  there. 

"For  the  first  few  years  of  our  terrestrial  Appren- 
ticeship, we  have  not  much  work  to  do  ;  but,  boarded 
and  lodged  gratis,  are  set  down  mostly  to  look  about 
us  over  the  workshop,  and  see  others  work,  till  we  have 
understood  the  tools  a  little,  and  can  handle  this  and 
that.  If  good  Passivity  alone,  and  not  good  Passivity 
and  good  Activity  together,  were  the  thing  wanted, 
then  was  my  early  position  favorable  beyond  the  most 
In  all  that  respects  openness  of  Sense,  affectionate 
Temper,  ingenuous  Curiosity,  and  the  fostering  of  these, 
what  more  could  I  have  wished  ?  On  the  other  side, 
however,  things  went  not  so  well.  My  Active  Power 
(Tliatkraff)  was  unfavorably  hemmed-in  ;  of  which  mis- 
fortune how  many  traces  yet  abide  with  me  !  In  an 
orderly  house,  where  the  litter  of  children's  sports  is 
hateful  enough,  your  training  is  too  stoical ;  rather  to 
bear  and  forbear  than  to  make  and  do.  I  was  forbid 
much  :  wishes  in  any  measure  bold  I  had  to  renounce  ; 
everywhere  a  strait  bond  of  Obedience  inflexibly  held 
me  down.  Thus  already  Freewill  often  came  in  pain- 
ful collision  with  Necessity  ;  so  that  my  tears  flowed, 
and  at  seasons  the  Child  itself  might  taste  that  root  of 
bitterness,  wherewith  the  whole  fruitage  of  our  life  is 
mingled  and  tempered. 

"In  which  habituation  to  Obedience,  truly,  it  was 
beyond  measure  safer  to  err  by  excess  than  by  defect. 
Obedience  is  our  universal  duty  and  destiny  ;  wherein 
whoso  will  not  bend  must  break  :  too  early  and  too 
thoroughly  we  cannot  be  trained  to  know  that  Would, 
in  this  world  of  ours,  is  as  mere  zero  to  Should,  and  for 


100  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

most  part  as  the  smallest  of  fractions  even  to  Shall. 
Hereby  was  laid  for  me  the  basis  of  worldly  Discretion, 
nay  of  Morality  itself.  Let  me  not  quarrel  with  my 
upbringing.  It  was  rigorous,  too  frugal,  compressively 
secluded,  everyway  unscientific  :  yet  in  that  very 
strictness  and  domestic  solitude  might  there  not  lie  the 
root  of  deeper  earnestness,  of  the  stem  from  which  all 
noble  fruit  must  grow  ?  Above  all,  how  unskilful  so- 
ever, it  was  loving,  it  was  well-meant,  honest ;  where- 
by every  deficiency  was  helped.  My  kind  Mother,  for 
as  such  I  must  ever  love  the  good  Gretchen,  did  me 
one  altogether  invaluable  service  :  she  taught  me,  less 
indeed  by  word  than  by  act  and  daily  reverent  look 
and  habitude,  her  own  simple  version  of  the  Christian 
Faith.  Andreas  too  attended  Church ;  yet  more  like  a 
parade-duty,  for  which  he  in  the  other  world  expected 
pay  with  arrears, — as,  I  trust,  he  has  received ;  but  my 
Mother,  with  a  true  woman's  heart,  and  fine  though 
uncultivated  sense,  was  in  the  strictest  acceptation 
Religious.  How  indestructibly  the  Good  grows,  and 
propagates  itself,  even  among  the  weedy  entangle- 
ments of  Evil !  The  highest  whom  I  knew  on  Earth  I 
here  saw  bowed  down,  with  awe  unspeakable,  before  a 
Higher  in  Heaven  :  such  things,  especially  in  infancy, 
reach  inwards  to  the  very  core  of  your  being ;  mys- 
teriously does  a  Holy  of  Holies  build  itself  into  visibility 
in  the  mysterious  deeps ;  and  Reverence,  the  divinest 
in  man,  springs  forth  undying  from  its  mean  envelop- 
ment of  Fear.  Wouldst  thou  rather  be  a  peasant's  son 
that  knew,  were  it  never  so  rudely,  there  was  a  God  in 
Heaven  and  in  Man  ;  or  a  duke's  son  that  only  knew 
there  were  two-and-thirty  quarters  on  the  family  coach  ?" 
To  which  last  question  we  must  answer  :  Beware,  O 
Teufelsdrockh,  of  spiritual  pride  ! 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  III. 

PEDAGOGY. 

HITHERTO  we  see  young  Gneschen,  in  his  indivisible 
case  of  yellow  serge,  borne  forward  mostly  on  the 
arms  of  kind  Nature  alone  ;  seated,  indeed,  and  much 
to  his  mind,  in  the  terrestrial  workshop,  but  (except  his 
soft  hazel  eyes,  which  we  doubt  not  already  gleamed 
with  a  still  intelligence)  called  upon  for  little  voluntary 
movement  there.  Hitherto,  accordingly,  his  aspect  is 
rather  generic,  that  of  an  incipient  Philosopher  and 
Poet  in  the  abstract ;  perhaps  it  would  puzzle  Herr 
Heuschrecke  himself  to  say  wherein  the  special 
Doctrine  of  Clothes  is  as  yet  foreshadowed  or  betokened. 
For  with  Gneschen,  as  with  others,  the  Man  may  in- 
deed stand  pictured  in  the  Boy  (at  least  all  the  pigments 
are  there) ;  yet  only  some  half  of  the  Man  stands  in  the 
Child,  or  young  Boy,  namely,  his  Passive  endowment, 
not  his  Active.  The  more  impatient  are  we  to  discover 
what  figure  he  cuts  in  this  latter  capacity  ;  how,  when, 
to  use  his  own  words,  "he  understands  the  tools  a 
little,  and  can  handle  this  or  that,"  he  will  proceed  to 
handle  it. 

Here,  however,  may  be  the  place  to  state  that,  in 
much  of  our  Philosopher's  history,  there  is  something 
of  an  almost  Hindoo  character  :  nay  perhaps  in  that  so 
well-fostered  and  everyway  excellent  "Passivity"  of 


102  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

his,  which,  with  no  free  development  of  the  antagonist 
Activity,  distinguished  his  childhood,  we  may  detect 
the  rudiments  of  much  that,  in  after  days,  and  still  in 
these  present  days,  astonishes  the  world.  For  the 
shallow-sighted,  Teufelsdrockh  is  oftenest  a  man  with- 
out Activity  of  any  kind,  a  No-man  ;  for  the  deep-sighted, 
again,  a  man  with  Activity  almost  superabundant,  yet 
so  spiritual,  close-hidden,  enigmatic,  that  no  mortal  can 
foresee  its  explosions,  or  even  when  it  has  exploded, 
so  much  as  ascertain  its  significance.  A  dangerous, 
difficult  temper  for  the  modern  European  ;  above  all, 
disadvantageous  in  the  hero  of  a  Biography  !  Now  as 
heretofore  it  will  behove  the  Editor  of  these  pages, 
were  it  never  so  unsuccessfully,  to  do  his  endeavor. 

Among  the  earliest  tools  of  any  complicacy  which  a 
man,  especially  a  man  of  letters,  gets  to  handle,  are  his 
Class-books.  On  this  portion  of  his  History,  Teufels- 
drockh looks  down  professedly  as  indifferent.  Read- 
ing he  "  cannot  remember  ever  to  have  learned  ;"  so 
perhaps  had  it  by  nature.  He  says  generally:  "Of 
the  insignificant  portion  of  my  Education,  which  de- 
pended on  Schools,  there  need  almost  no  notice  be 
taken.  I  learned  what  others  learn  ;  and  kept  it  stored- 
by  in  a  corner  of  my  head,  seeing  as  yet  no  manner  of 
use  in  it.  My  Schoolmaster,  a  downbent,  broken- 
hearted, underfoot  martyr,  as  others  of  that  guild  are, 
did  little  for  me,  except  discover  that  he  could  do  little  : 
he,  good  soul,  pronounced  me  a  genius,  fit  for  the 
learned  professions ;  and  that  I  must  be  sent  to  the 
Gymnasium,  and  one  day  to  the  University.  Mean- 
while, what  printed  thing  soever  I  could  meet  with  I 
read.  My  very  copper  pocket-money  I  laid-out  on 
stall-literature  ;  which,  as  it  accumulated,  I  with  my 
own  hands  sewed  into  volumes.  By  this  means  was 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


163 


the  young  head  furnished  with  a  considerable  miscel- 
lany of  things  and  shadows  of  things  :  History  in 
authentic  fragments  lay  mingled  with  Fabulous  chim- 
eras, wherein  also  was  reality ;  and  the  whole  not  as 
dead  stuff,  but  as  living  pabulum,  tolerably  nutritive 
for  a  mind  as  yet  so  peptic." 

That  the  Entepfuhl  Schoolmaster  judged  well,  we 
now  know.  Indeed,  already  in  the  youthful  Gneschen 
with  all  his  outward  stillness,  there  may  have  been 
manifest  an  inward  vivacity  that  promised  much ;  symp- 
toms of  a  spirit  singularly  open,  thoughtful,  almost 
poetical.  Thus,  to  say  nothing  of  his  Suppers  on  the 
Orchard-wall,  and  other  phenomena  of  that  earlier 
period,  have  many  readers  of  these  pages  stumbled,  in 
their  twelfth  year,  on  such  reflections  as  the  following? 
"It  struck  me  much,  as  I  sat  by  the  Kuhbach,  one  silent 
noontide,  and  watched  it  flowing,  gurgling,  to  think 
how  this  same  streamlet  had  flowed  and  gurgled, 
through  all  changes  of  weather  and  of  fortune,  from  be- 
yond the  earliest  date  of  History.  Yes,  probably  on 
the  morning  when  Joshua  forded  Jordan  ;  even  as  at 
the  midday  when  Caesar,  doubtless  with  difficulty,  swam 
the  Nile,  yet  kept  his  Commentaries  dry, — this  little 
Kuhbach,  assiduous  as  Tiber,  Eurotas  or  Siloa,  was 
murmuring  on  across  the  wilderness,  as  yet  unnamed, 
unseen :  here,  too,  as  in  the  Euphrates  and  the  Gan- 
ges, is  a  vein  or  veinlet  of  the  grand  World-circulation  of 
Waters,  which,  with  its  atmospheric  arteries,  has  lasted 
and  lasts  simply  with  the  World.  Thou  fool  !  Nature 
alone  is  antique,  and  the  oldest  art  a  mushroom  ;  that 
idle  crag  thou  sittest  on  is  six-thousand  years  of  age. " 
In  which  little  thought,  as  in  a  little  fountain,  may 
there  not  lie  the  beginning  of  those  well-nigh  unutter- 
able meditations  on  the  grandeur  and  mystery  of  TIME, 


104  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

and  its  relation  to  ETERNITY,  which  play  such  a  part  in 
this  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ? 

Over  his  Gymnasic  and  Academic  years  the  Professor 
by  no  means  lingers  so  lyrical  and  joyful  as  over  his 
childhood.  Green  sunny  tracts  there  are  still ;  but 
intersected  by  bitter  rivulets  of  tears,  here  and  there 
stagnating  into  sour  marshes  of  discontent  "With 
my  first  view  of  the  Hinterschlag  Gymnasium,"  writes 
he,  "my  evil  days  began.  Well  do  I  still  remember 
the  red  sunny  Whitsuntide  morning,  when,  trotting  full 
of  hope  by  the  side  of  Father  Andreas,  I  entered  the 
main  street  of  the  place,  and  saw  its  steeple-clock  (then 
striking  Eight)  and  Schuldthurm  (Jail),  and  the  aproned 
or  disaproned  Burghers  moving-in  to  breakfast :  a  little 
dog,  in  mad  terror,  was  rushing  past ;  for  some  human 
imps  had  tied  a  tin-kettle  to  its  tail  ;  thus  did  the  agon- 
ized creature,  loud-jingling,  career  through  the  whole 
length  of  the  Borough,  and  become  notable  enough. 
Fit  emblem  of  many  a  Conquering  Hero,  to  whom 
Fate  (wedding  Fantasy  to  Sense,  as  it  often  elsewhere 
does)  has  malignantly  appended  a  tin-kettle  of*  Ambi- 
tion, to  chase  him  on  ;  which  the  faster  he  runs,  urges 
him  th^  faster,  the  more  loudly  and  more  foolishly  ! 
Fit  emblem  also  of  much  that  awaited  myself,  in  that 
mischievous  Den  ;  as  in  the  World,  whereof  it  .was  a 
portion  and  epitome  ! 

"Alas,  the  kind  beech-rows  of  Entepfuhl  were  hidden 
in  the  distance  :  I  was  among  strangers,  harshly,  at 
best  indifferently,  disposed  towards  me ;  the  young 
heart  felt,  for  the  first  time,  quite  orphaned  and  alone." 
His  schoolfellows,  as  is  usual,  persecuted  him : 
"They  were  Boys,"  he  says,  "mostly  rude  Boys,  and 
obeyed  the  impulse  of  rude  Nature,  which  bids  the  deer- 
herd  fall  upon  any  stricken  hart,  the  duck-flock  put  to 


S  A  A' TO  A'  RESARTUS.  16$ 

death  any  broken-winged  brother  or  sister,  and  on  all 
hands  the  strong  tyrannize  over  the  weak. "  He  admits, 
that  though  "perhaps  in  an  unusual  degree  morally 
courageous,  he  succeeded  ill  in  battle,  and  would  fain 
have  avoided  it ;  a  result,  as  would  appear,  owing  less 
to  his  small  personal  stature  (for  in  passionate  seasons 
he  was  "incredibly  nimble"),  than  to  his  "virtuous 
principles  :"  "if  it  was  disgraceful  to  be  beaten,"  says 
he,  "it  was  only  a  shade  less  disgraceful  to  have  so 
much  as  fought  ;  thus  was  I  drawn  two  ways  at  once, 
and  in  this  important  element  of  school-history,  the 
war-element,  had  little  but  sorrow."  On  the  whole, 
that  same  excellent  "  Passivity,"  so  notable  in  Teufels- 
drockh's  childhood,  is  here  visibly  enough  again  get- 
ting nourishment.  "He  wept  often;  indeed  to  such 
a  degree  that  he  was  nicknamed  Der  Weinende  (the 
Tearful),  which  epithet,  till  towards  his  thirteenth 
year,  was  indeed  not  quite  unmerited.  Only  at  rare 
intervals  did  the  young  soul  burst-forth  into  fire-eyed 
rage,  and,  with  a  stormfulness  (Ungestum)  under  which 
the  boldest  quailed,  assert  that  he  too  had  Rights  of 
Man,  or  at  least  of  Mankin. "  In  all  which,  who  does 
not  discern  a  fine  flower-tree  and  cinnamon-tree  (of 
genius)  nigh  choked  among  pumpkins,  reed-grass  and 
ignoble  shrubs  ;  and  forced  if  it  would  live,  to  struggle 
upwards  only,  and  not  outwards  ;  into  a  height  quite 
sickly,  and  disproportion ed  to  its  breadth  ? 

We  find,  moreover,  that  his  Greek  and  Latin  were 
"  mechanically  "  taught ;  Hebrew  scarce  even  mechan- 
ically ;  much  else  which  they  called  History,  Cosmog- 
raphy, Philosophy,  and  so  forth,  no  better  than  not  at 
all.  So  that,  except  inasmuch  as  Nature  was  still  busy  ; 
and  he  himself  "went  about,  as  was  of  old  his  wont, 
among  the  Craftsmen's  workshops,  there  learning  many 


lo6  SARTOK  KESAKTUS. 

things";  and  farther  lighted  on  some  small  store  of 
curious  reading,  in  Hans  Wachtel  the  Cooper's  house, 
where  he  lodged, — his  time,  it  would  appear,  was 
utterly  wasted.  Which  facts  the  Professor  has  not  yet 
learned  to  look  upon  with  any  contentment.  Indeed, 
throughout  the  whole  of  this  Bag  Scorpio,  \vhere  we 
now  are,  and  often  in  the  following  Bag,  he  shows  him- 
self unusually  animated  on  the  matter  of  Education, 
and  not  without  some  touch  of  what  we  might  presume 
to  be  anger. 

' '  My  Teachers, "  says  he,  ' '  were  hide-bound  Pedants, 
without  knowledge  of  man's  nature,  or  of  boy's  ;  or  of 
aught  save  their  lexicons  and  quarterly  account-books. 
Innumerable  dead  Vocables  (no  dead  Language,  for 
they  themselves  knew  no  Language)  they  crammed  into 
us,  and  called  it  fostering  the  growth  of  mind.  How 
can  an  inanimate,  mechanical  Gerundgrinder,  the  like 
of  whom  will,  in  a  subsequent  century,  be  manufactured 
at  Niirnberg  out  of  wood  and  leather,  foster  the  growth 
of  anything  ;  much  more  of  Mind,  which  grows,  not  like 
a.vegetable  (by  having  its  roots  littered  with  etymologi- 
cal compost),  but  like  a  spirit,  by  mysterious  contact 
of  Spirit ;  Thought  kindling  itself  at  the  fire  of  living 
Thought  ?  How  shall  he  give  kindling,  in  whose  own 
inward  man  there  is  no  live  coal,  but  all  is  burnt-out 
to  a  dead  grammatical  cinder  ?  The  Hinterschlag  Pro- 
fessors knew  syntax  enough ;  and  of  the  human  soul 
thus  much :  that  it  had  a  faculty  called  Memory,  and 
could  be  acted-on  through  the  muscular  integument 
by  appliance  of  birch-rods. 

"Alas,  so  is  it  everywhere,  so  will  it  ever  be;  till 
the  Hodman  is  discharged,  or  reduced  to  hodbearing ; 
and  an  Architect  is  hired  and  on  all  hands  fitly  en- 
couraged: till  communities  and  individuals  discover. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  107 

not  without  surprise,  that  fashioning  the  souls  of  a 
generation  by  Knowledge  can  rank  on  a  le'vel  with 
blowing  their  bodies  to  pieces  by  Gunpowder  ;  that  with 
Generals  and  Fieldmarshals  for  killing,  there  should  be 
world-honored  Dignitaries,  and  were  it  possible,  true 
God-ordained  Priests,  for  teaching.  But  as  yet,  though 
the  Soldier  wears  openly,  and  even  parades,  his  butcher- 
ing-tool,  nowhere,  far  as  I  have  travelled,  did  the 
Schoolmaster  make  show  of  his  instructing-tool  :  nay, 
were  he  to  walk  abroad  with  birch  girt  on  thigh,  as  if 
he  therefrom  expected  honor,  would  there  not,  among 
the  idler  class,  perhaps  a  certain  levity  be  excited  ? " 

In  the  third  year  of  this  Gymnasic  period,  Father 
Andreas  seems  to  have  died  :  the  young  Scholar,  other- 
wise so  maltreated,  saw  himself  for  the  first  time  clad 
outwardly  in  sables,  and  inwardly  in  quite  inexpressible 
melancholy.  "The  dark  bottomless  Abyss,  that  lies 
under  our  feet,  had  yawned  open  ;  the  pale  kingdoms 
of  Death,  with  all  their  innumerable  silent  nations  and 
generations,  stood  before  him  ;  the  inexorable  word, 
NEVER  !  now  first  showed  its  meaning.  My  Mother 
wept,  and  her  sorrow  got  vent  ;  but  in  my  heart  lay  a 
whole  lake  of  tears,  pent-up  in  silent  desolation. 
Nevertheless  the  unworn  Spirit  is  strong ;  Life  is  so 
healthful  that  it  even  finds  nourishment  in  Death  : 
these  stern  experiences,  planted  down  by  Memory  in 
my  Imagination,  rose  there  to  a  whole  cypress-forest, 
sad  but  beautiful ;  waving,  with  not  unmelodious  sighs, 
in  dark  luxuriance,  in  the  hottest  sunshine,  through 
long  years  of  youth  : — as  in  manhood  also  it  does,  and 
will  do  ;  for  I  have  now  pitched  my  tent  under  a 
Cypress-tree  ;  the  Tomb  is  now  my  inexpugnable  For- 
tress, ever  close  by  the  gate  of  which  I  look  upon  the 
hostile  armaments,  and  pains  and  penalties  of  tyrannous 


io8  SARTOR 

Life  placidly  enough,  and  listen  to  its  loudest,  threaten- 
ings  with  a  still  smile.  O  ye  loved  ones,  that  already 
sleep  in  the  noiseless  Bed  of  Rest,  whom  in  life  I  could 
only  weep  for  and  never  help  ;  and  ye,  who  wide- 
scattered  still  toil  lonely  in  the  monster-bearing  Desert, 
dyeing  the  flinty  ground  with  your  blood, — yet  a  little 
while,  and  we  shall  all  meet  THERE,  and  our  Mother's 
bosom  will  screen  us  all ;  and  Oppression's  harness, 
and  Sorrow's  fire-whip,  and  all  the  Gehenna  Bailiffs 
that  patrol  and  inhabit  ever-vexed  Time,  cannot  thence- 
forth harm  us  any  more  !  " 

Close  by  which  rather  beautiful  apostrophe,  lies  a 
labored  Character  of  the  deceased  Andreas  Futteral ;  of 
his  natural  ability,  his  deserts  in  life  (as  Prussian  Ser- 
geant) ;  with  long  historical  inquiries  into  the  genealogy 
of  the  Futteral  Family,  here  traced  back  as  far  as  Henry 
the  Fowler :  the  whole  of  which  we  pass  over,  not 
without  astonishment.  It  only  concerns  us  to  add,  that 
now  was  the  time  when  Mother  Gretchen  revealed  to 
her  foster-son  that  he  was  not  at  all  of  this  kindred  ;  or 
indeed  of  any  kindred,  having  come  into  historical 
existence  in  the  way  already  known  to  us.  "  Thus 
was  I  doubly  orphaned,"  says  he;  "bereft  not  only 
of  Possession,  but  even  of  Remembrance.  Sorrow  and 
Wonder,  here  suddenly  united,  could  not  but  produce 
abundant  fruit.  Such  a  disclosure,  in  such  a  season, 
struck  its  roots  through  my  whole  nature  :  ever  till  the 
years  of  mature  manhood,  it  mingled  with  my  whole 
thoughts,  was  as  the  stem  whereon  all  my  day-dreams 
and  night-dreams  grew.  A  certain  poetic  elevation, 
yet  also  a  corresponding  civic  depression,  it  naturally 
imparted  :  /  was  like  no  other  ;  in  which  fixed-idea, 
leading  sometimes  to  highest,  and  oftener  to  frightful- 
lest  results,  may  there  not  lie  the  first  spring  of  ten  den- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


109 


cies,  which  in  my  Life  have  become  remarkable  enough  ? 
As  in  birth,  so  in  action,  speculation,  and  social  posi- 
tion, my  fellows  are  perhaps  not  numerous." 

In  the  Bag  Sagittarius,  as  we  at  length  discover, 
Teufelsdrockh  has  become  a  University  man  ;  though 
how,  .when,  or  of  what  quality,  will  nowhere  disclose 
itself  with  the  smallest  certainty.  Few  things,  in  the 
way  of  confusion  and  capricious  indistinctness,  can 
now  surprise  our  readers  ;  not  even  the  total  want  of 
dates,  almost  without  parallel  in  a  Biographical  work. 
So  enigmatic,  so  chaotic  we  have  always  found,  and 
must  always  look  to  find,  these  scattered  Leaves.  In 
Sagittarius,  however,  Teufelsdrockh  begins  to  show 
himself  even  more  than  usually  Sibylline  :  fragments  of 
all  sorts  ;  scraps  of  regular  Memoir,  College-Exercises, 
Programmes,  Professional  Testimoniums,  Milkscores, 
torn  Billets,  sometimes  to  appearance  of  an  amatory 
cast ;  all  blown  together  as  if  by  merest  chance,  hence- 
forth bewilder  the  sane  Historian.  To  combine  any 
picture  of  these  University,  and  the  subsequent,  years  ; 
much  more,  to  decipher  therein  any  illustrative  prim- 
ordial elements  of  the  Clothes-Philosophy  becomes  such 
a  problem  as  the  reader  may  imagine. 

So  much  we  can  see  ;  darkly,  as  through  the  foliage 
of  some  wavering  thicket :  a  youth  of  no  common  en- 
dowment, who  has  passed  happily  through  Childhood, 
less  happily  yet  still  vigorously  through  Boyhood,  now 
at  length  perfect  in  "dead  vocables,"  and  set  down,  as 
he  hopes,  by  the  living  Fountain,  there  to  superadd 
Ideas  and  Capabilities.  From  such  Fountain  he  draws, 
diligently,  thirstily,  yet  never  or  seldom  with  his  whole 
heart,  for  the  water  nowise  suits  his  palate  ;  discourage- 
ments, entanglements,  aberrations  are  discoverable  or 


no  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

supposable.  Nor  perhaps  are  even  pecuniary  distresses 
wanting;  for  "  the  good  Gretchen,  who  in  spite  of 
advices  from  not  disinterested  relatives  has  sent  him 
hither,  must  after  a  time  withdraw  her  willing  but  too 
feeble  hand. "  Nevertheless  in  an  atmosphere  of  Pov- 
erty and  manifold  Chagrin,  the  Humor  of  that  young 
Soul,  what  character  is  in  him,  first  decisively  reveals 
itself;  and,  like  strong  sunshine  in  weeping  skies,  gives 
out  variety  of  colors,  some  of  which  are  prismatic. 
Thus,  with  the  aid  of  Time  and  of  what  Time  brings, 
has  the  stripling  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  waxed  into 
manly  stature ;  and  into  so  questionable  an  aspect, 
that  we  ask  with  new  eagerness,  How  he  specially 
came  by  it,  and  regret  anew  that  there  is  no  more  ex- 
plicit answer.  Certain  of  the  intelligible  and  partially 
significant  fragments,  which  are  few  in  number,  shall 
be  extracted  from  that  Limbo  of  a  Paper-bag  and  pre- 
sented with  the  usual  preparation. 

As  if,  in  the  Bag  Scorpio,  Teufelsdrockh  had  not 
already  expectorated  his  antipedagogic  spleen  ;  as  if, 
from  the  name  Sagittarius,  he  had  thought  himself 
called  upon  to  shoot  arrows,  we  here  again  fall-in  with 
such  matter  as  this  :  "The  University  where  I  was 
educated  still  stands  vivid  enough  in  my  remembrance, 
and  I  know  its  name  well;  which  name,  however,  I, 
from  tenderness  to  existing  interests  and  persons,  shall 
in  nowise  divulge.  It  is  my  painful  duty  to  say  that, 
out  of  England  and  Spain,  ours  was  the  worst  of  all 
hitherto  discovered  Universities.  This  is  indeed  a  time 
when  right  Education  is,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  impos- 
sible :  however,  in  degrees  of  wrongness  there  is  no 
limit :  nay,  I  can  conceive  a  worse  system  than  that  of 
the  Nameless  itself;  as  poisoned  victual  may  be  worse 
than  absolute  hunger. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  HI 

"It  is  written,  When  the  blind  lead  the  blind,  both 
shall  fall  into  the  ditch  :  wherefore,  in  such  circum- 
stances, may  it  not  sometimes  be  safer,  if  both  leader 
and  led  simply — sit  still?  Had  you,  anywhere  in 
Crim  Tartary,  walled-in  a  square  enclosure  ;  furnished 
it  with  a  small,  ill-chosen  Library  ;  and  then  turned 
loose  into  it  eleven-hundred  Christian  striplings,  to 
tumble  about  as  they  listed,  from  three  to  seven  years  : 
certain  persons,  under  the  title  of  Professors,  being 
stationed  at  the  gates,  to  declare  aloud  that  it  was  a 
University,  and  exact  considerable  admission-fees, — 
you  had,  not  indeed  in  mechanical  structure,  yet  in 
spirit  and  result,  some  imperfect  resemblance  of  our 
High  Seminary.  I  say,  imperfect ;  for  if  our  mechani- 
cal structure  was  quite  other,  so  neither  was  our  result 
altogether  the  same  :  unhappily,  we  were  not  in  Crim 
Tartary,  but  in  a  corrupt  European  city,  full  of  smoke 
and  sin  ;  moreover,  in  the  middle  of  a  Public,  which, 
without  far  costlier  apparatus  than  that  of  the  Square 
Enclosure,  and  Declaration  aloud,  you  could  not  be 
sure  of  gulling. 

"  Gullible,  however,  by  fit  apparatus,  all  Publics 
are ;  and  gulled,  with  the  most  surprising  profit.  To- 
wards anything  like  a  Statistics  of  Imposture,  indeed, 
little  as  yet  has  been  done  :  with  a  strange  indifference, 
our  Economists,  nigh  buried  under  Tables  for  minor 
Branches  of  Industry,  have  altogether  overlooked  the 
grand  all-overtopping  Hypocrisy  Branch  ;  as  if  our 
whole  arts  of  Puffery,  of  Quackery,  Priestcraft,  King- 
craft, and  the  innumerable  other  crafts  and  mysteries 
of  that  genus,  had  not  ranked  in  Productive  Industry 
at  all !  Can  any  one,  for  example,  so  much  as  say, 
What  moneys,  in  Literature  and  Shoeblacking,  are 
realized  by  actual  Instruction  and  actual  jet  Polish; 


112  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

what  by  fictitious-persuasive  Proclamation  of  such ; 
specifying,  in  distinct  items,  the  distributions,  circula- 
tions, disbursements,  incomings  of  said  moneys,  with 
the  smallest  approach  to  accuracy?  But  to  ask.  How 
far,  in  all  the  several  infinitely-complected  departments 
of  social  business,  in  government,  education,  in  manual, 
commercial,  intellectual  fabrication  of  every  sort, 
man's  Want  is  supplied  by  true  Ware  ;  how  far  by  the 
mere  Appearance  of  true  Ware  :— in  other  words,  To 
what  extent,  by  what  methods,  with  what  effects,  in 
various  times  and  countries,  Deception  takes  the  place 
of  wages  of  Performance  :  here  truly  is  an  Inquiry  big 
with  results  for  the  future  time,  but  to  which  hitherto 
only  the  vaguest  answer  can  be  given.  If  for  the 
present,  in  our  Europe,  we  estimate  the  ratio  of  Ware 
to  Appearance  of  Ware  so  high  even  as  at  One  to  a 
Hundred  (which,  considering  the  Wages  of  a  Pope, 
Russian  Autocrat,  or  English  Game-Preserver,  is 
probably  not  far  from  the  .mark), — what  almost  prodi- 
gious saving  may  there  not  be  anticipated,  as  the 
Statistics  of  Imposture  advances,  and  so  the  manufactur- 
ing of  Shams  (that  of  Realities  rising  into  clearer  and 
clearer  distinction  therefrom)  gradually  declines,  and 
at  length  becomes  all  but  wholly  unnecessary  ! 

"This  for  the  coming  golden  ages.  What  I  had  to 
remark,  for  the  present  brazen  one,  is,  that  in  several 
provinces,  as  in  Education,  Polity,  Religion,  where  so 
much  is  wanted  and  indispensable,  and  so  little  can  as 
yet  be  furnished,  probably  Imposture  is  of  sanative, 
anodyne  nature,  and  man's  Gullibility  not  his  worst 
blessing.  Suppose  your  sinews  of  war  quite  broken  ; 
I  mean  your  military  chest  insolvent,  forage  all  but 
exhausted ;  and  that  the  whole  army  is  about  to 
mutiny,  disband,  and  cut  your  and  each  other's  throat, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  1x3 

— then  were  it  not  well  could  you,  as  if  by  miracle,  pay 
them  in  any  sort  of  fairy-money,  feed  them  on  coagu- 
lated water,  or  mere  imagination  of  meat ;  whereby, 
till  the  real  supply  came  up,  they  might  be  kept  to- 
gether and  quiet  ?  Such  perhaps  was  the  aim  of  Nature, 
who  does  nothing  without  aim,  in  furnishing  her 
favorite,  Man,  with  this  his  so  omnipotent  or  rather 
omnipatient  Talent  of  being  Gulled. 

"  How  beautifully  it  works,  with  a  little  mechanism  ; 
nay,  almost  makes  mechanism  for  itself!  These  Pro- 
fessors in  the  Nameless  lived  with  ease,  with  safety,  by 
a  mere  Reputation,  constructed  in  past  times,  and  then 
too  with  no  great  effort,  by  quite  another  class  of 
persons.  Which  Reputation,  like  a  strong,  brisk-going 
undershot  wheel,  sunk  into  the  general  current,  bade 
fair,  with  only  a  little  annual  repainting  on  their  part, 
to  hold  long  together,  and  of  its  own  accord  assiduously 
grind  for  them.  Happy  that  it  was  so,  for  the  Millers  ! 
They  themselves  needed  not  to  work  ;  their  attempts 
at  working,  at  what  they  called  Educating,  now  when  I 
look  back  on  it,  fill  me  with  a  certain  mute  admiration. 

"  Besides  all  this,  we  boasted  ourselves  a  Rational 
University  ;  in  the  highest  degree  hostile  to  Mysticism  ; 
thus  was  the  young  vacant  mind  furnished  with  much 
talk  about  Progress  of  the  Species,  Dark  Ages,  Prejudice, 
and  the  like ;  so  that  all  were  quickly  enough  blown 
out  into  a  state  of  windy  argumentativeness  ;  whereby 
the  better  sort  had  soon  to  end  in  sick,  impotent  Skep- 
ticism; the  worser  sort  explode  (crepireri)  in  finished 
Self-conceit,  and  to  all  spiritual  intents  become  dead. — 
But  this  too  is  portion  of  mankind's  lot.  If  our  era  is 
the  Era  of  Unbelief,  why  murmur  under  it ;  is  there  not 
a  better  coming,  nay  c<jme  ?  As  in  long-drawn  sys- 
tole and  long-drawn  diastole,  must  the  period  of  Faith 


H4  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

alternate  with  the  period  of  Denial ;  must  the  vernal 
growth,  the  summer  luxuriance  of  all  Opinions,  Spirit- 
ual Representations  and  Creations,  be  followed  by,  and 
again  follow,  the  autumnal  decay,  the  winter  dissolution. 
For  man  lives  in  Time,  has  his  whole  earthly  being, 
endeavor  and  destiny  shaped  for  him  by  Time  :  only 
in  the  transitory  Time-Symbol  is  the  ever-motionless 
Eternity  we  stand  on  made  manifest.  And  yet,  in  such 
winter-seasons  of  Denial,  it  is  for  the  nobler-minded 
perhaps  a  comparative  misery  to  have  been  born,  and 
to  be  awake  and  work  ;  and  for  the  duller  a  felicity,  if, 
like  hibernating  animals,  safe-lodged  in  some  Salamanca 
University,  or  Sybaris  City,  or  other  superstitious  or 
voluptuous  Castle  of  Indolence,  they  can  slumber- 
through,  in  stupid  dreams,  and  only  awaken  when  the 
loud-roaring  hailstorms  have  all  done  their  work,  and  to 
our  prayers  and  martyrdoms  the  new  Spring  has  been 
vouchsafed. " 

That  in  the  environment  here  mysteriously  enough 
shadowed  forth,  Teufelsdrockh  must  have  felt  ill  at 
ease,  cannot  be  doubtful.  "  The  hungry  young,"  he 
says,  "looked  up  to  their  spiritual  Nurses  ;  and,  for  food, 
were  bidden  eat  the  east-wind.  What  vain  jargon  of 
controversial  Metaphysic,  Etymology,  and  mechanical 
Manipulation  falsely  named  Science,  was  current  there, 
I  indeed  learned,  better  perhaps  than  the  most. 
Among  eleven-hundred  Christian  youths,  there  will  not 
be  wanting  some  eleven  eager  to  learn.  By  collision 
with  such,  a  certain  warmth,  a  certain  polish  was  com- 
municated ;  by  instinct  and  happy  accident,  I  took  less 
to  rioting  (renommiren)  than  to  thinking  and  reading, 
which  latter  also  I  was  free  to  do.  Nay  from  the  chaos 
of  that  Library,  I  succeeded  in  fishing-up  more  books 
perhaps  than  had  been  known  to  the  very  keepers  there- 


SAR  TOR  RESAR  TUS.  1 1 5 

of.  The  foundation  of  a  Literary  Life  was  hereby  laid  :  I 
learned,  on  my  own  strength,  to  read  fluently  in  almost 
all  cultivated  languages,  on  almost  all  subjects  and  sci- 
ences ;  farther,  as  man  is  ever  the  prime  object  to  man, 
already  it  was  my  favorite  employment  to  read  char- 
acter in  speculation,  and  from  the  Writing  to  construe 
the  Writer.  A  certain  groundplan  of  Human  Nature  and 
Life  began  to  fashion  itself  in  me  ;  wondrous  enough, 
now  when  I  look  back  on  it ;  for  my  whole  Universe, 
physical  and  spiritual,  was  as  yet  a  Machine  !  How- 
ever such  a  conscious,  recognized  groundplan,  the 
truest  I  had,  was  beginning  to  be  there,  and  by  addi- 
tional experiments  might  be  corrected  and  indefinitely 
extended." 

Thus  from  poverty  does  the  strong  educe  nobler 
wealth  ;  thus  in  the  destitution  of  the  wild  desert  does 
our  young  Ishmael  acquire  for  himself  the  highest  of 
all  possessions,  that  of  Self-help.  Nevertheless  a  desert 
this  was,  waste,  and  howling  with  savage  monsters. 
Teufelsdrockh  gives  us  long  details  of  his  "fever- 
paroxysms  of  Doubt ; "  his  Inquiries  concerning 
Miracles,  and  the  Evidences  of  religious  Faith  ;  and 
how  "in  the  silent  night-watches,  still  darker  in  his 
heart  than  over  sky  and  earth,  he  has  cast  himself 
before  the  All-seeing,  and  with  audible  prayers  cried 
vehemently  for  Light,  for  deliverance  from  Death  and 
the  Grave.  Not  till  after  long  years,  and  unspeakable 
agonies,  did  the  believing  heart  surrender;  sink  into 
spell-bound  sleep,  under  the  nightmare,  Unbelief ;  and, 
in  this  hag-ridden  dream,  mistake  God's  fair  living 
world  for  a  pallid,  vacant  Hades  and  extinct  Pande- 
monium. But  through  such  Purgatory  pain, "  continues 
he,  "it  is  appointed  us  to  pass ;  first  must  the  dead 
Letter  of  Religion  own  itself  dead,  and  drop  piecemeal 


Il6  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

into  dust,  if  the  living  Spirit  of  Religion,  freed  from  this 
its  charnel-house,  is  to  arise  on  us,  newborn  of  Heaven, 
and  with  new  healing  under  its  wings. " 

To  which  Purgatory  pains,  seemingly  severe  enough, 
if  we  add  a  liberal  measure  of  Earthly  distresses,  want 
of  practical  guidance,  want  of  sympathy,  want  of 
money,  want  of  hope  ;  and  all  this  in  the  fervid  season 
of  youth,  so  exaggerated  in  imagining,  so  boundless  in 
desires,  yet  here  so  poor  in  means, — do  we  not  see  a 
strong  incipient  spirit  oppressed  and  overloaded  from 
without  and  from  within  ;  the  fire  of  genius  struggling- 
up  among  fuel-wood  of  the  greenest,  and  as  yet  with 
more  of  bitter  vapor  than  of  clear  flame  ? 

From  various  fragments  of  Letters  and  other  docu- 
mentary scraps,  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  Teufelsdrockh, 
isolated,  shy,  retiring  as  he  was,  had  not  altogether 
escaped  notice  :  certain  established  men  are  aware  of 
his  existence  ;  and,  if  stretching-out  no  helpful  hand, 
have  at  least  their  eyes  on  him.  He  appears,  though  in 
dreary  enough  humor,  to  be  addressing  himself  to  the 
Profession  of  Law  ; — whereof,  indeed,  the  world  has 
since  seen  him  a  public  graduate.  But  omitting  these 
broken,  unsatisfactory  thrums  of  Economical  relation, 
let  us  present  rather  the  following  small  thread  of 
Moral  relation  ;  and  therewith,  the  reader  for  himself 
weaving  it  in  at  the  right  place,  conclude  our  dim 
arras-picture  of  these  University  years. 

"  Here  also  it  was  that  I  formed  acquaintance  with 
Herr  Towgood,  or,  as  it  is  perhaps  better  written,  Herr 
Toughgut;  a  young  person  of  quality  (von  Adel),  from 
the  interior  parts  of  England.  He  stood  connected,  by 
blood  and  hospitality,  with  the  Counts  von  Zahdarm,  in 
this  quarter  of  Germany;  to  which  noble  Family  I 
likewise  was,  by  his  means,  with  all  friendliness, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  liy 

brought  near.  Towgood  had  a  fair  talent,  unspeakably 
ill-cultivated  ;  with  considerable  humor  of  character  : 
and,  bating  his  total  ignorance,  for  he  knew  nothing 
except  Boxing  and  a  little  Grammar,  showed  less  of 
that  aristocratic  impassivity,  and  silent  fury,  than  for 
most  part  belongs  to  Travellers  of  his  nation.  To  him 
I  owe. my  first  practical  knowledge  of  the  English  and 
their  ways  ;  perhaps  also  something  of  the  partiality 
with  which  I  have  ever  since  regarded  that  singular 
people.  Towgood  was  not  without  an  eye,  could  he 
have  come  at  any  light.  Invited  doubtless  by  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Zahdarm  Family,  he  had  travelled  hither, 
in  the  almost  frantic  hope  of  perfecting  his  studies ; 
he,  whose  studies  had  as  yet  been  those  of  infancy, 
hither  to  a  University  where  so  much  as  the  notion  of 
perfection,  not  to  say  the  effort  after  it,  no  longer 
existed !  Often  we  would  condole  over  the  hard 
destiny  of  the  Young  in  this  era  :  how,  after  all  our 
toil,  we  were  to  be  turned-out  into  the  world,  with 
beards  on  our  chins  indeed,  but  with  few  other  attributes 
of  manhood ;  no  existing  thing  that  we  were  trained  to 
Act  on,  nothing  that  we  could  so  much  as  Believe. 
'How  has  our  head  on  the  outside  a  polished  Hat,' 
would  Towgood  exclaim,  '  and  in  the  inside  Vacancy, 
or  a  froth  of  Vocables  and  Attorney-Logic  !  At  a  small 
cost  men  are  educated  to  make  leather  into  shoes ;  but 
at  a  great  cost,  what  am  I  educated  to  make  ?  By 
Heaven,  Brother  !  what  I  have  already  eaten  and  worn, 
as  I  came  thus  far,  would  endow  a  considerable 
Hospital  of  Incurables.' — 'Man,  indeed,'  I  would 
answer,  'has  a  Digestive  Faculty,  which  must  be  kept 
working,  were  it  even  partly  by  stealth.  But  as  for 
our  Mis-education,  make  not  bad  worse  ;  waste  not  the 
time  yet  ours,  in  trampling  on  thistles  because  they 


Ii8  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

have  yielded  us  no  figs.  Frisch  zu,  Bruder  !  Here  are 
Books,  and  we  have  brains  to  read  them  ;  here  is  a 
whole  Earth  and  a  whole  Heaven,  and  we  have  eyes 
to  look  on  them  :  Frisch  zu  ! ' 

' '  Often  also  our  talk  was  gay  ;  not  without  brilliancy, 
and  even  fire.  We  looked-out  on  Life,  with  its  strange 
scaffolding,  where  all  at  once  harlequins  dance,  and 
men  are  beheaded  and  quartered  :  motley,  not  unter- 
rific  was  the  aspect ;  but  we  looked  on  it  like  brave 
youths.  For  myself,  these  were  perhaps  my  most 
genial  hours.  Towards  this  young  warmhearted, 
strongheaded  and  wrongheaded  Herr  Towgood  I  was 
even  near  experiencing  the  now  obsolete  sentiment  of 
Friendship.  Yes,  foolish  Heathen  that  I  was,  I  felt 
that,  under  certain  conditions,  I  could  have  loved  this 
man,  and  taken  him  to  my  bosom,  and  been  his  brother 
once  and  always.  By  degrees,  however,  I  understood 
the  new  time,  and  its  wants.  If  man's  Sou!  is  indeed, 
as  in  the  Finnish  Language,  and  Utilitarian  Philosophy, 
a  kind  of  Stomach,  what  else  is  the  true  meaning 
of  Spiritual  Union  but  an  Eating  together  ?  Thus 
we,  instead  of  Friends,  are  Dinner-guests  ;  and  here 
as  elsewhere  have  cast  away  chimeras." 

So  ends,  abruptly  as  is  usual,  and  enigmatically,  this 
little  incipient  romance.  What  henceforth  becomes  of 
the  brave  Herr  Towgood,  or  Toughgut  ?  He  has  dived- 
under,  in  the  Autobiographical  Chaos,  and  swims  we 
see  not  where.  Does  any  reader  "  in  the  interior  parts 
of  England  "  know  of  such  a  man  ? 


SA  A'  TO  A'  XESA  A'  TVS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

GETTING    UNDER    WAY. 

"Tnus  nevertheless,"  writes  our  Autobiographer,  ap- 
parently as  quitting  College,  "  was  there  realized  Some- 
what ;  namely,  I,  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  :  a  visible 
Temporary  Figure  (Zeitbild),  occupying  some  cubic  feet 
of  Space,  and  containing  within  it  Forces  both  physical 
and  spiritual ;  hopes,  passions,  thoughts ;  the  whole 
wondrous  furniture,  in  more  or  less  perfection,  belong- 
ing to  that  mystery,  a  Man.  Capabilities  there  were 
in  me  to  give  battle,  in  some  small  degree,  against  the 
great  Empire  of  Darkness  :  does  not  the  very  Ditcher 
and  Delver,  with  his  spade,  extinguish  many  a  thistle 
and  puddle  ;  and  so  leave  a  little  Order,  where  he  found 
the  opposite  ?  Nay,  your  very  Daymoth  has  capabili- 
ties in  this  kind ;  and  ever  organizes  something  (into 
its  own  Body,  if  no  otherwise);  which  was  before  Inor- 
ganic ;  and  of  mute  dead  air  makes  living  music,  though 
only  of  the  faintest,  by  humming. 

"  How  much  more,  one  whose  capabilities  are  spir- 
itual ;  who  has  learned,  or  begun  learning,  the  grand 
thaumaturgic  art  of  Thought !  Thaumaturgic  I  name 
it ;  for  hitherto  all  Miracles  have  been  wrought  there- 
by, and  henceforth  innumerable  will  be  wrought ; 
whereof  we,  even  in  these  days,  witness  some.  Of 
the  Poet's  and  Prophet's  inspired  Message,  and  how  it 


120  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

makes  and  unmakes  whole  worlds,  I  shall  forbear  men* 
tion  :  but  cannot  the  dullest  hear  Steam-engines  clank- 
ing around  him  ?  Has  he  not  seen  the  Scottish  Bras- 
smith's  IDEA  (and  this  but  a  mechanical  one)  travelling 
on  fire-wings  round  the  Cape,  and  across  two  Oceans  ; 
and  stronger  than  any  other  Enchanter's  Familiar,  on 
all  hands  unweariedly  fetching  and  carrying  :  at  home, 
not  only  weaving  Cloth ;  but  rapidly  enough  overturn- 
ing the  whole  old  system  of  Society  ;  and,  for  Feudal- 
ism and  Preservation  of  the  Game,  preparing  us,  by 
indirect  but  sure  methods,  Industrialism  and  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  Wisest  ?  Truly  a  Thinking  Man  is  the 
worst  enemy  the  Prince  of  Darkness  can  have  ;  every 
time  such  a  one  announces  himself,  I  doubt  not,  there 
runs  a  shudder  through  the  Nether  Empire  ;  and  new 
Emissaries  are  trained,  with  new  tactics,  to,  if  possible, 
entrap  him,  and  hoodwink  and  handcuff  him. 

"With  such  high  vocation  had  I  too,  as  denizen  of 
the  Universe,  been  called.  Unhappy  it  is,  however, 
that  though  born  to  the  amplest  Sovereignty,  in  this 
way,  with  no  less  than  sovereign  right  of  Peace  and 
War  against  the  Time-Prince  (Zeiffiirst),  or  Devil,  and 
all  his  Dominions,  your  coronation-ceremony  costs 
such  trouble,  your  sceptre  is  so  difficult  to  get  at,  or 
even  to  get  eye  on  !  " 

By  which  last  wiredrawn  similitude  does  Teufels- 
drockh  mean  no  more  than  that  young  men  find  obsta- 
cles in  what  we  call  "  getting  under  way?"  "Not 
what  I  Have,"  continues  he,  "but  what  I  Do  is  my 
Kingdom.  To  each  is  given  a  certain  inward  Talent, 
a  certain  outward  Environment  of  Fortune ;  to  each, 
by  wisest  combination  of  these  two,  a  certain  maximum 
of  Capability.  But  the  hardest  problem  were  ever  this 
first:  To  find  by  study  of  yourself,  and  of  the  ground 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  12I 

you  stand  on,  what  your  combined  inward  and  out- 
ward Capability  specially  is.  For,  alas,  our  young 
soul  is  all  budding  with  Capabilities,  and  we  see  not 
yet  which  is  the  main  and  true  one.  Always  too  the 
new  man  is  in  a  new  time,  under  new  conditions  ;  his 
course  can  be  the  fac-simile  of  no  prior  one,  but  is  by 
its  nature  original.  And  then  how  seldom  will  the 
outward  Capability  fit  the  inward  :  though  talented 
wonderfully  enough,  we  are  poor,  unfriended,  dyspep- 
tical, bashful ;  nay  what  is  worse  than  all,  we  are  fool- 
ish. Thus,  in  a  whole  imbroglio  of  Capabilities,  we  go 
stupidly  groping  about,  to  grope  which  is  ours,  and 
often  clutch  the  wrong  one  :  in  this  mad  work  must 
several  years  of  our  small  term  be  spent,  till  the  pur- 
blind Youth,  by  practice,  acquire  notions  of  distance, 
and  become  a  seeing  Man.  Nay,  many  so  spend  their 
whole  term,  and  in  ever-new  expectation,  ever-new 
disappointment,  shift  from  enterprise  to  enterprise,  and 
from  side  to  side  :  till  at  length,  as  exasperated  strip- 
lings of  threescore-and-ten,  they  shift  into  their  last 
enterprise,  that  of  getting  buried. 

"Such,  since  the  most  of  us  are  too  ophthalmic, 
would  be  the  general  fate  ;  were  it  not  that  one  thing 
saves  us  :  our  Hunger.  For  on  this  ground,  as  the 
prompt  nature  of  Hunger  is  well  known,  must  a  prompt 
choice  be  made  :  hence  have  we,  with  wise  foresight, 
Indentures  and  Apprenticeships  for  our  irrational 
young ;  whereby,  in  due  season,  the  vague  univer- 
sality of  a  Man  shall  find  himself  ready-moulded  into  a 
specific  Craftsman ;  and  so  thenceforth  work,  with 
much  or  with  little  waste  of  Capability  as  it  may  be ; 
yet  not  with  the  worst  waste,  that  of  time.  Nay  even 
in  matters  spiritual,  since  the  spiritual  artist  too  is  born 
blind,  and  does  not,  like  certain  other  creatures,  receive 


122  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

sight  in  nine  days,  but  far  later,  sometimes  never, — > 
is  it  not  well  that  there  should  be  what  we  call  Profes- 
sions, or  Bread-studies  (Brodzwecke),  preappointed  us  ? 
Here,  circling  like  the  gin  horse,  for  whom  partial  or 
total  blindness  is  no  evil,  the  Bread-artist  can  travel 
contentedly  round  and  round,  still  fancying  that  it  is 
forward  and  forward;  and  realize  much:  for  himself 
victuals  ;  for  the  world  an  additional  horse's  power  in 
the  grand  corn-mill  or  hemp-mill  of  Economic  Society. 
For  me  too  had  such  a  leading-string  been  provided  ; 
only  that  it  proved  a  neck-halter,  and  had  nigh  throttled 
me,  till  I  broke  it  off.  Then,  in  the  words  of  Ancient 
Pistol,  did  the  world  generally  become  mine  oyster, 
which  I,  by  strength  or  cunning,  was  to  open,  as  I 
would  and  could.  Almost  had  I  deceased  (fas/  war  ich 
umgekommeri),  so  obstinately  did  it  continue  shut." 

We  see  here,  significantly  foreshadowed,  the  spirit  of 
much  that  was  to  befall  our  Autobiographer  :  the  his- 
torical embodiment  of  which,  as  it  painfully  takes 
shape  in  his  Life,  lies  scattered,  in  dim  disastrous 
details,  through  this  Bag  Pisces,  and  those  that  follow. 
A  young  man  of  high  talent,  and  high  though  still 
temper,  like  a  young  mettled  colt,  "  breaks-off  his  neck- 
halter,"  and  bounds  forth,  from  his  peculiar  manger, 
into  the  wide  world  ;  which,  alas,  he  finds  all  rigor- 
ously fenced-in.  Richest  clover-fields  tempt  his  eye  ; 
but  to  him  they  are  forbidden  pasture  :  either  pining 
in  progressive  starvation,  he  must  stand  ;  or,  in  mad 
exasperation,  must  rush  to  and  fro,  leaping  against 
sheer  stone-walls,  which  he  cannot  leap  over,  which 
only  lacerate  and  lame  him  ;  till  at  last,  after  thousand 
attempts  and  endurances,  he,  as  if  by  miracle,  clears 
his  way  ;  not  indeed  into  luxuriant  and  luxurious  clover, 


SAKTOR  XF.SARTVS. 


123 


yet  into  a  certain  bosky  wilderness  where  existence  is 
still  possible,  and  Freedom,  though  waited  on  by 
Scarcity,  is  not  without  sweetness.  In  a  word,  Teu- 
felsdrockh  having  thrown-up  his  legal  Profession,  finds 
himself  without  landmark  of  outward  guidance  ;  where- 
by his  previous  want  of  decided  Belief,  or  inward  guid- 
ance, is  frightfully  aggravated.  Necessity  urges  him 
on  ;  Time  will  not  stop,  neither  can  he,  a  Son  of  Time  ; 
wild  passions  without  solacement,  wild  faculties  with- 
out employment,  ever  vex  and  agitate  him.  He  too 
must  enact  that  stern  Monodrama,  No  Object  and  no 
Rest ;  must  front  its  successive  destinies,  work  through 
to  its  catastrophe,  and  deduce  therefrom  what  moral 
he  can. 

Yet  let  us  be  just  to  him,  let  us  admit  that  his  "neck- 
halter  "  sat  nowise  easy  on  him  ;  that  he  was  in  some 
degree  forced  to  break  it  off.  If  we  look  at  the  young 
man's  civic  position,  in  this  Nameless  capital,  as  he 
emerges  from  its  Nameless  University,  we  can  discern 
well  that  it  was  far  from  enviable.  His  first  Law- 
Examination  he  has  come  through  triumphantly  ;  and 
can  even  boast  that  the  Examen  Rigorosum  need  not 
have  frightened  him:  but  though  he  is  hereby  "an 
Auscultator  of  respectability, "  what  avails  it  ?  There  is 
next  to  no  employment  to  be  had.  Neither,  for  a 
youth  without  connections,  is  the  process  of  Expecta- 
tion very  hopeful  in  itself ;  nor  for  one  of  his  disposi- 
tion much  cheered  from  without.  "My  fellow  Aus- 
cultators,"  he  says,  "were  Auscultators  :  they  dressed, 
and  digested,  and  talked  articulate  words  ;  other  vitality 
showed  they  almost  none.  Small  speculation  in  those 
eyes,  that  they  did  glare  withal !  Sense  neither  for 
the  high  nor  for  the  deep,  nor  for  aught  human  or 


124  SAKTOK  RZSAKTUS. 

divine,  save  Only  for  the  faintest  scent  of  coming  Pre- 
ferment." In  which  words,  indicating  a  total  estrange- 
ment on  the  part  of  Teufelsdrockh,  may  there  not  also 
lurk  traces  of  bitterness  as  from  wounded  vanity? 
Doubtless  these  prosaic  Auscultators  may  have  sniffed 
at  him,  with  his  strange  ways  ;  and  tried  to  hate,  and 
what  was  much  more  impossible,  to  despise  him. 
Friendly  communion,  in  any  case,  there  could  not  be  : 
already  has  the  young  Teufelsdrockh  left  the  other 
young  geese  ;  and  swims  apart,  though  as  yet  uncer- 
tain whether  he  himself  is  cygnet  or  gosling. 

Perhaps,  too,  what  little  employment  he  had  was 
performed  ill,  at  best  unpleasantly.  "Great  practi- 
cal method  and  expertness"  he  may  brag  of;  but 
is  there  not  also  great  practical  pride,  though  deep- 
hidden,  only  the  deeper  seated  ?  So  shy  a  man  can 
never  have  been  popular.  We  figure  to  ourselves, 
how  in  those  days  he  may  have  played  strange  freaks 
with  his  independence,  and  so  forth  :  do  not  his  own 
words  betoken  as  much?  "Like  a  very  young  per- 
son, I  imagined  it  was  with  Work  alone,  and  not  also 
with  Folly  and  Sin,  in  myself  and  others,  that  I  had 
been  appointed  to  struggle."  Be  this  as  it  may,  his 
progress  from  the  passive  Auscultatorship,  towards 
any  active  Assessorship,  is  evidently  of  the  slowest. 
By  degrees,  those  same  established  men,  once  partially 
inclined  to  patronize  him,  seem  to  withdraw  their  coun- 
tenance, and  give  him  up  as  "  a  man  of  genius:" 
against  which  procedure  he,  in  these  Papers,  loudly 
protests.  "As  if,  "says  he,  "the  higher  did  not  pre- 
suppose the  lower  ;  as  if  he  who  can  fly  into  heaven, 
could  not  also  walk  post  if  he  resolved  on  it !  But  the 
world  is  an  old  woman,  and  mistakes  any  gilt  farthing 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  125 

for   a  gold  coin  ;   whereby  being  often  cheated,   she 
will  thenceforth  trust  nothing  but  the  common  copper." 

How  our  winged  sky-messenger,  unaccepted  as  a 
terrestrial  runner,  contrived,  in  the  meanwhile,  to 
keep  himself  from  flying  skyward  without  return,  is 
not  too  clear  from  these  Documents.  Good  old 
Gretchen  seems  to  have  vanished  from  the  scene, 
perhaps  from  the  Earth  ;  other  Horn  of  Plenty,  or  even 
of  Parsimony,  nowhere  flows  for  him;  so  that  "the 
prompt  nature  of  Hunger  being  well  known,"  we  are 
not  without  our  anxiety.  From  private  Tuition,  in 
never  so  many  languages  and  sciences,  the  aid  deriva- 
ble is  small ;  neither,  to  use  his  own  words,  "does  the 
young  Adventurer  hitherto  suspect  in  himself  any  liter- 
ary gift ;  but  at  best  earns  bread-and-water  wages,  by 
his  wide  faculty  of  Translation.  Nevertheless,"  con- 
tinues he,  "  that  I  subsisted  is  clear,  for  you  find  me 
even  now  alive."  Which  fact,  however,  except  upon 
the  principle  of  our  true-hearted,  kind  old  Proverb,  that 
"there  is  always  life  for  a  living  one, "  we  must  profess 
ourselves  unable  to  explain. 

Certain  Landlords'  Bills,  and  other  economic  Docu- 
ments, bearing  the  mark  of  Settlement,  indicate  that 
he  was  not  without  money  ;  but,  like  an  independent 
Hearth-holder,  if  not  House-holder,  paid  his  way. 
Here  also  occur,  among  many  others,  two  little  muti- 
lated Notes,  which  perhaps  throw  light  on  his  condi- 
tion. The  first  has  now  no  date,  or  writer's  name,  but 
a  huge  Blot ;  and  runs  to  this  effect  :  "  The  (Inkblof), 
tied-down  by  previous  promise,  cannot,  except  by  best 
wishes,  forward  the  Herr  Teufelsdrockh's  views  on  the 
Assessorship  in  question  ;  and  sees  himself  under  the 
cruel  necessity  of  forbearing,  for  the  present,  what 


126  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

were  otherwise  his  duty  and  joy,  to  assist  in  opening 
the  career  for  a  man  of  genius,  on  whom  far  higher 
triumphs  are  yet  waiting."  The  other  is  on  gilt  paper  ; 
and  interests  us  like  a  sort  of  epistolary  mummy  now 
dead,  yet  which  once  lived  and  beneficently  worked. 
We  give  it  in  the  original  :  ' '  Herr  Teufelsdrockh  wird 
von  der  Frau  Grdfin,  auf  Donnerstag,  zum  ^ESTHETISCHEX 
THEE  schonstens  eingeladen." 

Thus,  in  answer  to  a  cry  for  solid  pudding,  where- 
of there  is  the  most  urgent  need,  comes,  epigram- 
matically  enough,  the  invitation  to  a  wash  of  quite  fluid 
Esthetic  Tea!  How  Teufelsdrockh,  now  at  actual 
handgrips  with  Destiny  herself,  may  have  comported 
himself  among  these  Musical  and  Literary  Dilettanti  of 
both  sexes,  like  a  hungry  lion  invited  to  a  feast  of 
chicken-weed,  we  can  only  conjecture.  Perhaps  in 
expressive  silence,  and  abstinence  :  otherwise  if  the 
lion,  in  such  case,  is  to  feast  at  all,  it  cannot  be  on  the 
chicken-weed,  but  only  on  the  chickens.  For  the  rest, 
as  this  Frau  Grafin  dates  from  the  Zdhdarm  House,  she 
can  be  no  other  than  the  Countess  and  mistress  of  the 
same  ;  whose  intellectual  tendencies,  and  good-will  to 
Teufelsdrockh,  whether  on  the  footing  of  Herr  Tow- 
good,  or  on  his  own  footing,  are  hereby  manifest. 
That  some  sort  of  relation,  indeed,  continued,  for  a 
time,  to  connect  our  Autobiographer,  though  perhaps 
feebly  enough,  with  this  noble  House,  we  have  else- 
where express  evidence.  Doubtless,  if  he  expected 
patronage,  it  was  in  vain  ;  enough  for  him  if  he  here 
obtained  occasional  glimpses  of  the  great  world,  from 
which  we  at  one  time  fancied  him  to  have  been  always 
excluded.  "The  Zahdarms,"  says  he,  "lived  in  the 
soft,  sumptuous  garniture  of  Aristocracy ;  whereto 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  127 

Literature  and  Art,  attracted  and  attached  from  with- 
out, were  to  serve  as  the  handsomest  fringing.  It  was 
to  the  Gnddigen  Frau  (her  Ladyship)  that  this  latter 
improvement  was  due :  assiduously  she  gathered, 
dextrously  she  fitted-on,  what  fringing  was  to  be  had  ; 
lace  or  cobweb,  as  the  place  yielded. "  Was  Teufels- 
drockh  also  a  fringe,  of  lace  or  cobweb ;  or  promising 
to  be  such?  "  With  his  Excellenz  (the  Count),"  con- 
tinues he,  "I  have  more  than  once  had  the  honor  to 
converse  ;  chiefly  on  general  affairs,  and  the  aspect  of 
the  world,  which  he,  though  now  past  middle  life, 
viewed  in  no  unfavorable  light ;  finding  indeed,  except 
the  Outrooting  of  Journalism  (die  auszurottende  Jour- 
nalsitiK),  little  to  desiderate  therein.  On  some  points, 
as  his  Excellenz  was  not  uncholeric,  I  found  it  more 
pleasant  to  keep  silence.  Besides,  his  occupation  being 
that  of  Owning  Land,  there  might  be  faculties  enough, 
which,  as  superfluous  for  such  use,  were  little  de- 
veloped in  him." 

That  to  Teufelsdrockh  the  aspect  of  the  world  was 
nowise  so  faultless,  and  many  things  besides  "the 
Outrooting  of  Journalism  "  might  have  seemed  improve- 
ments, we  can  readily  conjecture.  With  nothing  but 
a  barren  Auscultatorship  from  without,  and  so  many 
mutinous  thoughts  and  wishes  from  within,  his 
position  was  no  easy  one.  "  The  Universe, "  he  says, 
"was  as  a  mighty  Sphinx-riddle,  which  I  knew  so  little 
of,  yet  must  rede,  or  be  devoured.  In  red  streaks  of 
unspeakable  grandeur,  yet  also  in  the  blackness  of 
darkness,  was  Life,  to  my  too-unfurnished  Thought, 
unfolding  itself.  A  strange  contradiction  lay  in  me  ; 
and  I  as  yet  knew  not  the  solution  of  it ;  knew  not 
that  spiritual  music  can  spring  only  from  discords  set 


I2g  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

in  harmony ;  that  but  for  Evil  there  were  no  Good,  as 
victory  is  only  possible  by  battle." 

"I  have  heard  affirmed  (surely  in  jest),"  observes  he 
elsewhere,  "by  not  unphilanthropic  persons,  that  it 
Were  a  real  increase  of  human  happiness,  could  all 
young  men  from  the  age  of  nineteen  be  covered  under 
barrels,  or  rendered  otherwise  invisible ;  and  there  left 
to  follow  their  lawful  studies  and  callings,  till  they 
emerged, sadder  and  wiser,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five. 
With  which  suggestion,  at  least  as  considered  in  the 
light  of  a  practical  scheme,  I  need  scarcely  say  that  I  no- 
wise coincide.  Nevertheless  it  is  plausibly  urged  that, 
as  young  ladies  (Mddchen)  are,  to  mankind,  precisely 
the  most  delightful  in  those  years  ;  so  young  gentlemen 
(Bubcheri)  do  then  attain  their  maximum  of  detestability. 
Such  gawks  (Gecken).  are  they,  and  foolish  peacocks, 
and  yet  with  such  a  vulturous  hunger  for  self-indul- 
gence ;  so  obstinate,  obstreperous,  vain-glorious  ;  in  all 
senses,  so  froward  and  so  forward.  No  mortal's 
endeavor  or  attainment  will,  in  the  smallest,  content 
the  as  yet  unendeavoring,  unattaining  young  gentle- 
man ;  but  he  could  make  it  all  infinitely  better,  were  it 
worthy  of  him.  Life  everywhere  is  the  most  man- 
ageable matter,  simple  as  a  question  in  the  Rule-of- 
Three  :  multiply  your  second  and  third  term  together, 
divide  the  product  by  the  first,  and  your  quotient  will 
be  the  answer, — which  you  are  but  an  ass  if  you 
cannot  come  at.  The  booby  has  not  yet  found-out,  by 
any  trial,  that,  do  what  one  will,  there  is  ever  a  cursed 
fraction,  oftenest  a  decimal  repeater,  and  no  net  integer 
quotient  so  much  as  to  be  thought  of. " 

In  which  passage  does  not  there  lie  an  implied  con- 
fession that  Teufelsdrockh  himself,  besides  his  outward 


SAKTOK  RESARTUS. 


I29 


obstructions,  had  an  inward,  still  greater,  to  contend 
with  ;  namely,  a  certain  temporary,  youthful,  yet  still 
afflictive  derangement  of  head  ?  Alas,  on  the  former 
side  alone,  his  case  was  hard  enough.  "  It  continues 
ever  true,"  says  he,  "that  Saturn,  or  Chronos,  or  what 
we  call  TIME,  devours  all  his  children:  only  by  incessant 
Running,  by  incessant  Working,  may  you  (for  some 
three-score-and-ten  years)  escape  him  ;  and  you  too  he 
devours  at  last.  Can  any  Sovereign,  or  Holy  Alliance 
of  Sovereigns,  bid  Time  stand  still;  even  in  thought, 
shake  themselves  free  of  Time  ?  Our  whole  terrestrial 
being  is  based  on  Time,  and  built  of  Time  ;  it  is  wholly 
a  Movement,  a  Time-impulse ;  Time  is  the  author  of 
it,  the  material  of  it.  Hence  also  our  Whole  Duty, 
which  is  to  move,  to  work, — in  the  right  direction. 
Are  not  our  Bodies  and  our  Souls  in  continual  move- 
ment, whether  we  will  or  not ;  in  a  continual  Waste, 
requiring  a  continual  Repair  ?  Utmost  satisfaction  of 
our  whole  outward  and  inward  Wants  were  but  satis- 
faction for  a  space  of  Time ;  Thus,  whatso  we  have 
done,  is  done,  and  for  us  annihilated,  and  ever  must 
we  go  and  do  anew.  O  Time-Spirit,  how  hast  thou 
environed  and  imprisoned  us,  and  sunk  us  so  deep  in 
thy  troublous  dim  Time-Element,  that  only  in  lucid 
moments  can  so  much  as  glimpses  of  our  upper  Azure 
Home  be  revealed  to  us  !  Me,  however,  as  a  Son  of 
Time,  unhappier  than  some  others,  was  Time  threat- 
ening to  eat  quite  prematurely  ;  for,  strive  as  I  might, 
there  was  no  good  Running,  so  obstructed  was  the 
path,  so  gyved  were  the  feet."  That  is  to  say,  we  pre- 
sume, speaking  in  the  dialect  of  this  lower  world,  that 
Teufelsdrockh's  whole  duty  and  necessity  was,  like 
other  men's,  "to  work, — in  the  right  direction,"  and 
9 


130  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

that  no  work  was  to  be  had ;  whereby  he  became 
wretched  enough.  As  was  natural :  with  haggard 
Scarcity  threatening  him  in  the  distance;  and  so  vehe- 
ment a  soul  languishing  in  restless  inaction,  and  forced 
thereby,  like  Sir  Hudibras's  sword  by  rust, 

To  eat  into  itself,  for  lack 

Of  something  else  to  hew  and  hack  ! 

But  on  the  whole,  the  same  "excellent  Passivity," 
as  it  has  all  along  done,  is  here  again  vigorously  flour- 
ishing ;  in  which  circumstance  may  we  not  trace  the 
beginnings  of  much  that  now  characterizes  our  Pro- 
fessor ;  and  perhaps,  in  faint  rudiments,  the  origin  of 
the  Clothes-Philosophy  itself?  Already  the  attitude  he 
has  assumed  toward  the  World  is  too  defensive;  not,  as 
would  have  been  desirable,  a  bold  attitude  of  attack. 
"So  far  hitherto,"  he  says,  "  as  I  had  mingled  with 
mankind,  I  was  notable,  if  for  anything,  for  a  certain 
stillness  of  manner,  which,  as  my  friends  often  rebuk- 
ingly  declared,  did  but  ill  express  the  keen  ardor  of  my 
feelings.  I,  in  truth,  regarded  men  with  an  excess 
both  of  love  and  of  fear.  The  mystery  of  a  Person, 
indeed,  is  ever  divine  to  him  that  has  a  sense  for  the 
Godlike.  Often,  notwithstanding,  was  I  blamed,  and 
by  half-strangers  hated,  for  my  so-called  Hardness 
(Hdrte),  my  indifferentism  towards  men ;  and  the 
seemingly  ironic  tone  I  had  adopted,  as  my  favorite 
dialect  in  conversation.  Also,  the  panoply  of  Sarcasm 
was  but  as  a  buckram  case,  wherein  I  had  striven  to 
envelope  myself ;  that  so  my  own  poor  Person  might 
live  safe  there,  and  in  all  friendliness,  being  no  longer 
exasperated  by  wounds.  Sarcasm  I  now  see  to  be,  in 
general,  the  language  of  the  Devil  j  for  which  reason  I 


SAX  TOR  KESAXTUS.  131 

have  long  since  as  good  as  renounced  it.  But  how 
many  individuals  did  I,  in  those  days,  provoke  into 
some  degree  of  hostility  thereby  !  An  ironic  man,  with 
his  sly  stillness,  and  ambuscading  ways,  more  espe- 
cially an  ironic  young  man,  from  whom  it  is  least  ex- 
pected, may  be  viewed  as  a  pest  to  society.  Have  we 
not  seen  persons  of  weight  and  name  coming  forward, 
with  gentlest  indifference,  to  tread  such  a  one  out  of 
sight,  as  an  insignificancy  and  worm,  start  ceiling-high 
(batkenhoch),and  thence  fall  shattered  and  supine,  to 
be  borne  home  on  shutters,  not  without  indignation, 
when  he  proved  electric  and  a  torpedo  !  " 

Alas,  how  can  a  man  with  this  devilishness  of  temper 
make  way  for  himself  in  Life;  where  the  first  problem, 
as  Teufelsdrockh  too  admits,  is  "to  unite  yourself  with 
some  one  and  with  somewhat  (sick  anzuschliesseri)  ? " 
Division,  not  union,  is  written  on  most  part  of  his  pro- 
cedure. Let  us  add  to  that,  in  no  great  length  of  time, 
the  only  important  connection  he  had  ever  succeeded 
in  forming,  his  connection  with  the  Zahdarm  Family, 
seems  to  have  been  paralyzed,  for  all  practical  uses, 
by  the  death  of  the  ' '  not  uncholeric  "  old  Count.  This 
fact  stands  recorded,  quite  incidentally,  in  a  certain 
Discourse  on  Epitaphs,  huddled  into  the  present  Bag, 
among  so  much  else;  of  which  Essay  the  learning  and 
curious  penetration  are  more  to  be  approved  of  than 
the  spirit  His  grand  principle  is,  that  lapidary  in- 
scriptions, of  what  sort  soever,  should  be  Historical 
rather  than  Lyrical.  "By  request  of  that  worthy 
Nobleman's  survivors,"  says  he,  "I  undertook  to  com- 
pose his  Epitaph;  and  not  unmindful  of  my  own  rules, 
produced  the  following;  which  however,  for  an  alleged 
defect  of  Latinity,  a  defect  never  yet  fully  visible  to 
myself,  still  remains  unengraven  ;  " — wherein  we  may 


132  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

predict,  there  is  more  than  the  Latinity  that  will  sur- 
prise an  English  reader  : 


me  JACET 

PHILIPPUS  ZAEHDARM  COGNOMINE 
MAGNUS, 

ZAEHDARMI  COMES, 
EX  IMPERII  CONCILIO, 

VELLERIS  AUREI,  PERISCELIDIS,  NECNON  VULTURIS  NIGRI 
EQUES. 

QUI  DUM  SUB  LUNA  AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES  MILLE  PERDICES 

PLUMBO  CONFECIT  : 

VARII  CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA  MILLIES  CENTENA  MILLIA, 

PER  SE,  PERQUE  SERVOS  QUADRUPEDES  BIPEDESVE, 

HAUD  SINE  TUMULTU  DEVOLVENS, 

IN  STERCUS 

PALAM  CONVERTIT. 

NUNC  A  LABORE  REQUIESCENTEM 
OPERA  SEQUUNTUR. 

SI  MONUMENTUM  QUERIS, 
FIMETUM  ADSPICE. 

PRIMUM  IN  ORBE  DEJECIT  [sub  datO\  ;    POSTREMUM 

[sub  dato\. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


»33 


CHAPTER  V. 

ROMANCE. 

"FoR  long  years,"  writes  Teufelsdrockh,  "had  the 
poor  Hebrew,  in  this  Egypt  of  an  Auscultatorship,  pain- 
fully toiled,  baking  bricks  without  stubble,  before  ever 
the  question  once  struck  him  with  entire  force  :  For 
what  ? — Beym  Himmell  For  Food  and  Warmth  !  And 
are  Food  and  Warmth  nowhere  else,  in  the  whole  wide 
Universe,  discoverable  ? — Come  of  it  what  might,  I  re- 
solved to  try." 

Thus  then  are  we  to  see  him  in  a  new  independent 
capacity,  though  perhaps  far  from  an  improved  one. 
Teufelsdrockh  is  now  a  man  without  Profession.  Quit- 
ting the  common  Fleet  of  herring-busses  and  whalers, 
where  indeed  his  leeward,  laggard  condition  was  pain- 
ful enough,  he  desperately  steers  off,  on  a  course  of  his 
ovrn,  by  sextant  and  compass  of  his  own.  Unhappy 
Teufelsdrockh  !  Though  neither  Fleet  nor  Traffic,  nor 
Commodores  pleased  thee,  still  was  it  not  a  Fleet,  sail- 
ing in  prescribed  track,  for  fixed  objects  ;  above  all,  in 
combination,  wherein,  by  mutual  guidance,  by  all 
manner  of  loans  and  borrowings,  each  could  mani- 
foldly aid  the  other?  How  wilt  thou  sail  in  unknown 
seas  ;  and  for  thyself  find  that  shorter  Northwest  Pas- 
sage to  thy  fair  Spice-country  of  a  Nowhere  ? — A  solitary 
rover,  on  such  a  voyage,  with  such  nautical  tactics, 


134  SARTOR  R&SARTUS. 

will  meet  with  adventures.  Nay,  as  we  forthwith  dis- 
cover, a  certain  Calypso-Island  detains  him  at  the  very 
outset ;  and  as  it  were  falsifies  and  oversets  his  whole 
reckoning. 

"If  in  youth,"  writes  he  once,  "the  Universe  is 
majestically  unveiling,  and  everywhere  Heaven  re- 
vealing itself  on  Earth,  nowhere  to  the  Young  Man 
does  this  Heaven  on  Earth  so  immediately  reveal 
itself  as  in  the  Young  Maiden.  Strangely  enough, 
in  this  strange  life  of  ours,  it  has  been  so  appointed. 
On  the  whole,  as  I  have  often  said,  a  Person  (Person- 
lichkeif)  is  ever  holy  to  us  ;  a  certain  orthodox 
Anthropomorphism  connects  my  Me  with  all  Thees  in 
bonds  of  Love :  but  it  is  in  this  approximation  of 
the  Like  and  Unlike,  that  such  heavenly  attraction, 
as  between  Negative  and  Positive,  first  bums-out 
into  a  flame.  Is  the  pitifullest  mortal  Person,  think 
you,  indifferent  to  us  ?  Is  it  not  rather  our  heartfelt 
wish  to  be  made  one  with  him  ;  to  unite  him  to  us, 
by  gratitude,  by  admiration,  even  by  fear ;  or  failing 
all  these,  unite  ourselves  to  him  ?  But  how  much 
more,  in  this  case  of  the  Like-Unlike  !  Here  is  con- 
ceded us  the  higher  mystic  possibility  of  such  a  union, 
the  highest  in  our  Earth ;  thus,  in  the  conducting 
medium  of  Fantasy,  flames-forth  that  yfre-development 
of  the  universal  Spiritual  Electricity,  which,  as  unfolded 
between  man  and  woman,  we  first  emphatically  de- 
nominate LOVE. 

"In  every  well-conditioned  stripling,  as  I  conjec- 
ture, there  already  blooms  a  certain  prospective  Para- 
dise, cheered  by  some  fairest  Eve  ;  nor,  in  the  stately 
vistas,  and  flowerage  and  foliage  of  that  Garden,  is  a 
Tree  of  Knowledge,  beautiful  and  awful  in  the  midst 
thereof,  wanting.  Perhaps  too  the  whole  is  but  the 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  135 

lovelier,  if  Cherubim  and  a  Flaming  Sword  divide  it 
from  all  footsteps  of  men  ;  and  grant  him,  the  imagi- 
native stripling,  only  the  view,  not  the  entrance. 
Happy  season  of  virtuous  youth,  when  shame  is  still 
an  impassable  celestial  barrier ;  and  the  sacred  air- 
cities  of  Hope  have  not  shrunk  into  the  mean  clay- 
hamlets  of  Reality  ;  and  man,  by  his  nature,  is  yet  in- 
finite and  free. 

"As  for  our  young  Forlorn,"  continues  Teufels- 
drockh,  evidently  meaning  himself,  "in  his  secluded 
way  of  life,  and  with  his  glowing  Fantasy,  the  more 
fiery  that  it  burnt  under  cover,  as  in  a  reverberating 
furnace,  his  feeling  towards  the  Queens  of  this  Earth 
was,  and  indeed  is,  altogether  unspeakable.  A  visible 
Divinity  dwelt  in  them  ;  to  our  young  Friend  all  women 
were  holy,  were  heavenly.  As  yet  he  but  saw  them 
flitting  past,  in  their  many-colored  angel-plumage ;  or 
hovering  mute  and  inaccessible  on  the  outskirts  of 
/Esthetic  Tea  :  all  of  air  they  were,  all  Soul  and  Form  ; 
so  lovely,  like  mysterious  priestesses,  in  whose  hand 
was  the  invisible  Jacob's-ladder,  whereby  man  might 
mount  into  very  Heaven.  That  he,  our  poor  Friend, 
should  ever  win  for  himself  one  of  these  Gracefuls 
(Holderi) — Ach  Gott!  how  could  he  hope  it ;  should  he 
not  have  died  under  it  ?  There  was  a  certain  delirious 
vertigo  in  the  thought. 

"Thus  was  the  young  man,  if  all-sceptical  of  Demons 
and  Angels  such  as  the  vulgar  had  once  believed  in, 
nevertheless  not  unvisited  by  hosts  of  true  Sky-born, 
who  visibly  and  audibly  hovered  round  him  whereso- 
ever he  went ;  and  they  had  that  religious  worship  in 
his  thought,  though  as  yet  it  was  by  their  mere  earthly 
and  trivial  name  that  he  named  them.  But  now,  if  on 
a  soul  so  circumstanced,  some  actual  Air-maiden, 


136  SARTOK  RESARTUS. 

incorporated  into  tangibility  and  reality,  should  cast 
any  electric  glance  of  kind  eyes,  saying  thereby  'Thou 
too  mayest  love  and  be  loved  ;  '  and  so  kindle  him, — 
good  Heaven,  what  a  volcanic,  earthquake-bringing, 
all-consuming  fire  were  probably  kindled  !  " 

Such  a  fire,  it  afterwards  appears,  did  actually  burst- 
forth,  with  explosions  more  or  less  Vesuvian,  in  the 
inner  man  of  Herr  Diogenes  ;  as  indeed  how  could  it 
fail  ?  A  nature,  which,  in  his  own  figurative  style,  we 
might  say,  had  now  not  a  little  carbonized  tinder,  of 
Irritability  ;  with  so  much  nitre  of  latent  Passion,  and 
sulphurous  Humor  enough ;  the  whole  lying  in  such 
hot  neighborhood,  close  by  "a  reverberating  furnace 
of  Fantasy  : "  have  we  not  here  the  components  of 
driest  Gunpowder,  ready,  on  occasion  of  the  smallest 
spark,  to  blaze-up  ?  Neither,  in  this  our  Life-element, 
are  sparks  anywhere  wanting.  Without  doubt,  some 
Angel,  whereof  so  many  hovered  round,  would  one 
day,  leaving  "  the  outskirts  of  Esthetic  Tea"  flit  nigher  ; 
and,  by  electric  Promethean  glance,  kindle  no  despi- 
cable firework.  Happy,  if  it  indeed  proved  a  Firework, 
and  flamed-off  rocketwise,  in  successive  beautiful 
bursts  of  splendor,  each  growing  naturally  from  the 
other,  through  the  several  stages  of  a  happy  Youthful 
Love ;  till  the  whole  were  safely  burnt-out ;  and  the 
young  soul  relieved  with  little  damage !  Happy,  if  it 
did  not  rather  prove  a  Conflagration  and  mad  Explo- 
sion ;  painfully  lacerating-  the  heart  itself ;  nay  perhaps 
bursting  the  heart  in  pieces  (which  were  Death) ;  or  at 
best,  bursting  the  thin  walls  of  your  "reverberating  fur- 
nace," so  that  it  rage  thenceforth  all  unchecked  among 
the  contiguous  combustibles  (which  were  Madness)  : 
till  of  the  so  fair  and  manifold  internal  world  of  our 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  137 

Diogenes,  there  remained  Nothing,  or  only  the  "crater 
of  an  extinct  volcano  !  " 

From  multifarious  Documents  in  this  Bag  Capricor- 
nus,  and  in  the  adjacent  ones  on  both  sides  thereof,  it 
becomes  manifest  that  our  philosopher,  as  stoical  and 
cynical  as  he  now  looks,  was  heartily  and  even  fran- 
tically in  Love  :  here  therefore  may  our  old  doubts 
whether  his  heart  were  of  stone  or  of  flesh  give  way. 
He  loved  once  ;  not  wisely  but  too  well.  And  once 
only  :  for  as  your  Congreve  needs  a  new  case  or  wrap- 
page for  every  new  rocket,  so  each  human  heart  can 
properly  exhibit  but  one  Love,  if  even  one  ;  the  "  First 
Love  which  is  infinite"  can  be  followed  by  no  second 
like  unto  it.  In  more  recent  years,  accordingly,  the 
Editor  of  these  Sheets  was  led  to  regard  Teufelsdrockh 
as  a  man  not  only  who  '•vould  never  wed,  but  who 
would  never  even  flirt ;  whom  the  grand-climacteric 
itself,  and  St.  Martin's  Summer  of  incipient  Dotage, 
would  crown  with  no  new  myrtle-garland.  To  the 
Professor,  women  are  henceforth  Pieces  of  Art ;  of 
Celestial  Art,  indeed  ;  which  celestial  pieces  he  glories 
to  survey  in  galleries  but  has  lost  thought  of  purchasing. 

Psychological  readers  are  not  without  curiosity  to 
see  how  Teufelsdrockh,  in  this  for  him  unexampled 
predicament,  demeans  himself ;  with  what  specialities 
of  successive  configuration,  splendor,  and  color,  his 
Firework  blazes-off.  Small,  as  usual,  is  the  satisfac- 
tion that  such  can  meet  with  here.  From  amid  these 
confused  masses  of  Eulogy  and  Elegy,  with  their  mad 
Petrarchan  and  Werterean  ware  lying  madly  scattered 
among  all  sorts  of  quite  extraneous  matter,  not  so 
much  as  the  fair  one's  name  can  be  deciphered.  For, 
without  doubt,  the  title  Blumine,  whereby  she  is  here 
designated,  and  which  means  simply  Goddess  of 


138  SARTOR  XESARTUS. 

Flowers,  must  be  fictitious.  Was  her  real  name  Flora, 
then  ?  But  what  was  her  surname,  or  had  she  none  ? 
Of  what  station  in  Life  was  she  ;  of  what  parentage, 
fortune,  aspect?  Specially,  by  what  Pre-established 
Harmony  of  occurrences  did  the  Lover  and  the  Loved 
meet  one  another  in  so  wide  a  world  ;  how  did  they 
behave  in  such  meeting  ?  To  all  which  questions,  not 
unessential  in  a  Biographic  work,  mere  Conjecture 
must  for  most  part  return  answer.  "It  was  appointed," 
says  our  Philosopher,  ' '  that  the  high  celestial  orbit  of 
Blumine  should  intersect  the  low  sublunary  one  of  our 
Forlorn  ;  that  he,  looking  in  her  empyrean  eyes,  should 
fancy  the  upper  Sphere  of  Light  was  come  down  into 
this  nether  Sphere  of  Shadows  ;  and  finding  himself 
mistaken,  make  noise  enough." 

We  seem  to  gather  that  she  was  young,  hazel-eyed, 
beautiful  and  some  one's  Cousin  ;  highborn,  and  of 
high  spirit ;  but  unhappily  dependent  and  insolvent ; 
living,  perhaps,  on  the  not  too  gracious  bounty  of 
moneyed  relatives.  But  how  came  "  the  Wanderer" 
into  her  circle  ?  Was  it  by  the  humid  vehicle  of  ^Esthe- 
tic Te. ,  or  by  the  arid  one  of  mere  Business  ?  Was  it 
on  the  hand  of  Herr  Towgood  ;  or  of  the  Gnadige  Frau, 
who,  as  an  ornamental  Artist,  might  sometimes  like  to 
promote  flirtation,  especially  for  young  cynical  Non- 
descripts ?  To  all  appearance,  it  was  chiefly  by  Acci- 
dent, and  the  grace  of  Nature. 

"Thou  fairWaldschloss,"  writes  our  Autobiographer, 
"  what  stranger  ever  saw  thee,  were  it  even  an  absolved 
Auscultator,  officially  bearing  in  his  pocket  the  last 
Relatio  ex  Ac/is  he  would  ever  write,  but  must  have 
paused  to  wonder  !  Noble  Mansion  !  There  stoodest 
thou,  in  deep  Mountain  Amphitheatre,  on  umbrageous 
lawns,  in  thy  serene  solitude ;  stately,  massive,  all  of 


SARTOR  XESAKTUS.  i$g 

granite;  glittering  in  the  western  sunbeams,  like  a 
palace  of  El  Dorado,  overlaid  with  precious  metal. 
Beautiful  rose  up,  in  wavy  curvature,  the  slope  of  thy 
guardian  Hills ;  of  the  greenest  was  their  sward,  em- 
bossed with  its  dark-brown  frets  of  crag,  or  spotted  by 
some  spreading  solitary  Tree  and  its  shadow.  To  the 
unconscious  Wayfarer  thou  wert  also  as  an  Ammon's 
Temple  in  the  Libyan  Waste ;  where,  for  joy  and  woe, 
the  tablet  of  his  Destiny  lay  written.  Well  might  he 
pause  and  gaze ;  in  that  glance  of  his  were  prophecy 
and  nameless  forebodings. " 

But  now  let  us  conjecture  that  the  so  presentient 
Ausculator  has  handed-in  his  Relatio  ex  Actis  ;  been  in- 
vited to  a  glass  of  Rhine-wine  ;  and  so,  instead  of  re- 
turning dispirited  and  athirst  to  his  dusty  Town-home, 
is  ushered  into  the  Gardenhouse,  where  sit  the  choicest 
party  of  dames  and  cavaliers  :  if  not  engaged  in  ^Esthe- 
tic Tea,  yet  in  trustful  evening  conversation,  and  per- 
haps Musical  Coffee,  for  we  hear  of  "harps  and  pure 
voices  making  the  stillness  live."  Scarcely,  it  would 
seem,  is  the  Gardenhouse  inferior  in  respectability  to 
the  noble  Mansion  itself.  "Embowered  amid  rich 
foliage,  rose-clusters,  and  the  hues  and  odors  of  thou- 
sand flowers,  here  sat  that  brave  company  ;  in  front, 
from  the  wide-opened  doors,  fair  outlook  over  blossom 
and  bush,  over  grove  and  velvet  green,  stretching,  un- 
dulating onwards  to  the  remote  Mountain  peaks  :  so 
bright,  so  mild,  and  everywhere  the  melody  of  birds 
and  happy  creatures  :  it  was  all  as  if  man  had  stolen  a 
shelter  from  the  Sun  in  the  bosom-vesture  of  Summer 
herself.  How  came  it  that  the  Wanderer  advanced 
thither  with  such  .forecasting  heart  (ahndungsvoll),  by 
the  side  of  his  gay  host  ?  Did  he  feel  that  to  these  soft 
influences  his  hard  bosom  ought  to  be  shut ;  that  here, 


140  SARTOR  RZSARTUS. 

once  more,  Fate  had  it  in  view  to  try  him ;  to  mock 
him,  and  see  whether  there  were  Humor  in  him  ? 

"Next  moment  he  finds  himself  presented  to  the 
party  ;  and  especially  by  name  to — Blumine  !  Pecu- 
liar among  all  dames  and  damosels  glanced  Blumine, 
there  in  her  modesty,  like  a  star  among  earthly  lights. 
Noblest  maiden  !  whom  he  bent  to,  in  body  and  in 
soul ;  yet  scarcely  dared  look  at,  for  the  presence  filled 
him  with  painful  yet  sweetest  embarrassment. 

"  Blumine's  was  a  name  well  known  to  him  ;  far  and 
wide  was  the  fair  one  heard  of,  for  her  gifts,  her  graces, 
her  caprices  :  from  all  which  vague  colorings  of  Rumor, 
from  the  censures  no  less  than  from  the  praises,  had 
our  friend  painted  for  himself  a  certain  imperious  Queen 
of  Hearts,  and  blooming  warm  Earth-angel,  much 
more  enchanting  than  your  mere  white  Heaven-angels 
of  women,  in  whose  placid  veins  circulates  too  little 
naphtha-fire.  Herself  also  he  had  seen  in  public 
places ;  that  light  yet  so  stately  form ;  those  dark 
tresses,  shading  a  face  where  smiles  and  sunlight  played 
over  earnest  deeps  :  but  all  this  he  had  seen  only  as  a 
magic  vision,  for  him  inaccessible,  almost  without 
reality.  Her  sphere  was  too  far  from  his  ;  how  should 
she  ever  think  of  him  ;  O  Heaven  !  how  should  they 
so  much  as  once  meet  together  ?  And  now  that  Rose- 
goddess  sits  in  the  same  circle  with  him;  the  light  of 
her  eyes  has  smiled  on  him  ;  if  he  speak,  she  will  hear 
it !  Nay,  who  knows,  since  the  heavenly  Sun  looks 
into  lowest  valleys,  but  Blumine  herself  might  have 
aforetime  noted  the  so  unnotable ;  perhaps,  from  his 
very  gainsayers,  as  he  had  from  hers,  gathered  wonder, 
gathered  favor  for  him.  Was  the  attraction,  the  agita- 
tion mutual,  then  ;  pole  and  pole  trembling  towards 
contact,  when  once  brought  into  neighborhood  ?  Say 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  141 

rather,  heart  swelling  in  presence  of  the  Queen  of 
Hearts  ;  like  the  Sea  swelling  when  once  near  its  Moon  ! 
With  the  Wanderer  it  was  even  so  :  as  in  heavenward 
gravitation,  suddenly  as  at  the  touch  of  a  Seraph's  wand, 
his  whole  soul  is  roused  from  its  deepest  recesses  ;  and 
all  that  was  painful  and  that  was  blissful  there,  dim 
images,  vague  feelings  of  a  whole  Past  and  a  whole 
Future,  are  heaving  in  unquiet  eddies  within  him. 

"Often,  in  far  less  agitating  scenes,  had  our  still 
Friend  shrunk  forcibly  together ;  and  shrouded-up  his 
tremors  and  flutterings,  of  what  sort  soever,  in  a  safe 
cover  of  silence,  and  perhaps  of  seeming  Stolidity. 
How  was  it,  then,  that  here,  when  trembling  to  the 
core  of  his  heart,  he  did  not  sink  into  swoons,  but  rose 
into  strength,  into  fearlessness  and  clearness  ?  It  was 
his  guiding  Genius  (Damon]  that  inspired  him ;  he 
must  go  forth  and  meet  his  Destiny.  Show  thyself 
now,  whispered  it,  or  be  forever  hid.  Thus  sometimes 
it  is  even  when  your  anxiety  becomes  transcendental, 
that  the  soul  first  feels  herself  able  to  transcend  it ;  that 
she  rises  above  it,  in  fiery  victory  ;  and  borne  on  new- 
found wings  of  victory,  moves  so  calmly,  even  because 
so  rapidly,  so  irresistibly.  Always  must  the  Wanderer 
remember,  with  a  certain  satisfaction  and  surprise,  how 
in  this  case  he  sat  not  silent,  but  struck  adroitly  into 
the  stream  of  conversation ;  which  thenceforth,  to 
speak  with  an  apparent  not  a  real  vanity,  he  may  say 
that  he  continued  to  lead.  Surely,  in  those  hours,  a 
certain  inspiration  was  imparted  him,  such  inspiration 
as  is  still  possible  in  our  late  era.  The  self-secluded 
unfolds  himself  in  noble  thoughts,  in  free,  glowing 
words  ;  his  soul  is  as  one  sea  of  light,  the  peculiar  home 
of  Truth  and  Intellect ;  wherein  also  Fantasy  bodies- 
forthform  after  form,  radiant  with  all  prismatic  hues." 


142  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

It  appears,  in  this  otherwise  so  happy  meeting,  there 
talked  one  "Philistine  ;  "  who  even  now,  to  the  general 
weariness,  was  dominantly  pouring-forth  Philistinism 
(Philistriositdteri)  ;  little  witting  what  hero  was  here 
entering  to  demolish  him  !  We  omit  the  series  of  So- 
cratic,  or  rather  Diogenic  utterances,  not  unhappy  in 
their  way,  whereby  the  monster,  "persuaded  into 
silence,"  seems  soon  after  to  have  withdrawn  for  the 
night.  "Of  which  dialectic  marauder,"  writes  our 
hero,  "  the  discomfiture  was  visibly  felt  as  a  benefit  by 
most :  but  what  were  all  applauses  to  the  glad  smile, 
threatening  every  moment  to  become  a  laugh,  where- 
with Blumine  herself  repaid  the  victor?  He  ventured 
to  address  her,  she  answered  with  attention  :  nay  what 
if  there  were  a  slight  tremor  in  that  silver  voice  ;  what 
if  the  red  glow  of  evening  were  hiding  a  transient 
blush  ! 

"The  conversation  took  a  higher  tone,  one  fine 
thought  called  forth  another  :  it  was  one  of  those  rare 
seasons,  when  the  soul  expands  with  full  freedom,  and 
man  feels  himself  brought  near  to  man.  Gayly  in  light, 
graceful  abandonment,  the  friendly  talk  played  round 
that  circle  ;  for  the  burden  was  rolled  from  every  heart ; 
the  barriers  of  Ceremony,  which  are  indeed  the  laws  of 
polite  living,  had  melted  as  into  vapor  ;  and  the  poor 
claims  of  Me  and  TJiee,  no  longer  parted  by  rigid  fences, 
now  flowed  softly  into  one  another  ;  and  Life  lay  all 
harmonious,  many-tinted,  like  some  fair  royal  cham- 
paign, the  sovereign  and  owner  of  which  were  Love 
only.  Such  music  springs  from  kind  hearts,  in  a  kind 
environment  of  place  and  time.  And  yet  as  the  light 
grew  more  aerial  on  the  mountain-tops,  and  the  shadows 
fell  longer  over  the  valley,  some  faint  tone  of  sadness 
may  have  breathed  through  the  heart ;  and,  in  whispers 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  143 

more  or  less  audible,  reminded  every  one  that  as  this 
bright  day  was  drawing  towards  its  close,  so  likewise 
must  the  day  of  Man's  Existence  decline  into  dust  and 
darkness  ;  and  with  all  its  sick  toilings,  and  joyful  and 
mournful  noises,  sink  in  the  still  Eternity. 

"To  our  Friend  the  hours  seemed  moments  ;  holy 
was  he  and  happy  :  the  words  from  those  sweetest 
lips  came  over  him  like  dew  on  thirsty  grass  ;  all  bet- 
ter feelings  in  his  soul  seemed  to  whisper,  It  is  good 
for  us  to  be  here.  At  parting,  the  Blumine's  hand  was 
in  his  :  in  the  balmy  twilight,  with  the  kind  stars 
above  them,  he  spoke  something  of  meeting  again,  which 
was  not  contradicted;  he  pressed  gently  those  small 
soft  fingers,  and  it  seemed  as  if  they  were  not  hastily, 
not  angrily  withdrawn." 

Poor  Teufelsdrockh  !  it  is  clear  to  demonstration  thou 
art  smit  :  the  Queen  of  Hearts  would  see  a  "man  of 
genius"  also  sigh  for  her ;  and  there,  by  art-magic,  in 
that  preternatural  hour,  has  she  bound  and  spell-bound 
thee.  "Love  is  not  altogether  a  Delirium,"  says  he 
elsewhere  ;  "yet  has  it  many  points  in  common  there- 
with. I  call  it  rather  a  discerning  of  the  Infinite  in  the 
Finite,  of  the  Idea  made  Real ;  which  discerning  again 
may  be  either  true  or  false,  either  seraphic  or  demoniac 
Inspiration  or  Insanity.  But  in  the  former  case  too, 
as  in  common  Madness,  it  is  Fantasy  that  superadds 
itself  to  sight ;  on  the  so  petty  domain  of  the  Actual 
plants  its  Archimedes-lever,  whereby  to  move  at  will 
the  infinite  Spiritual.  Fantasy  I  might  call  the  true 
Heaven-gate  and  Hell-gate  of  man  :  his  sensuous  life 
is  but  the  small  temporary  stage  (Zeitbuhne),  whereon 
thick-streaming  influences  from  both  these  far  yet  near 
regions  meet  visibly,  and  act  tragedy  and  melodrama. 
Sense  can  support  herself  handsomely,  in  most  coua- 


144  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

tries,  for  some  eighteen  pence  a  day  ;  but  for  Fantasy 
planets  and  solar-systems  will  not  suffice.  Witness 
your  Pyrrhus  conquering  the  world,  yet  drinking  no 
better  red  wine  than  he  had  before. "  Alas  !  witness 
also  your  Diogenes,  flame-clad,  scaling  the  upper  Heaven 
and  verging  towards  Insanity,  for  prize  of  a  "high- 
souled  Brunette, "  as  if  the  earth  held  but  one  and  not 
several  of  these  ! 

He  says  that,  in  Town,  they  met  again  :  "  day  after 
day,  like  his  heart's  sun,  the  blooming  Blumine  shone 
on  him.  Ah  !  a  little  while  ago,  and  he  was  yet  in 
all  darkness  :  him  what  Graceful  (Holde)  would  ever 
love  ?  Disbelieving  all  things,  the  poor  youth  had 
never  learned  to  believe  in  himself.  Withdrawn,  in 
proud  timidity,  within  his  own  fastnesses ;  solitary 
from  men,  yet  baited  by  night-spectres  enough,  he  saw 
himself,  with  a  sad  indignation,  constrained  to  renounce 
the  fairest  hopes  of  existence.  And  now,  O  now  ! 
'  She  looks  on  thee,'  cried  he  :  '  she  the  fairest,  noblest  ; 
do  not  her  dark  eyes  tell  thee,  thou  art  not  despised  ? 
The  Heaven's-Messenger  !  All  Heaven's  blessings  be 
hers  ! '  Thus  did  soft  melodies  flow  through  his  heart  ; 
tones  of  an  infinite  gratitude  :  sweetest  intimations  that 
he  also  was  a  man,  that  for  him  also  unutterable  joys 
had  been  provided. 

' '  In  free  speech,  earnest  or  gay,  amid  lambent  glances, 
laughter,  tears,  and  often  with  the  inarticulate  mystic 
speech  of  Music  :  such  was  the  element  they  now 
lived  in  ;  in  such  a  many-tinted,  radiant  Aurora,  and 
by  this  fairest  of  Orient  Light-bringers  must  our  Friend 
be  blandished,  and  the  new  Apocalypse  of  Nature 
unrolled  to  him.  Fairest  Blumine  !  And,  even  as  a 
Star,  all  Fire  and  humid  Softness,  a  very  Light-ray 
incarnate  !  Was  there  so  much  as  a  fault,  a  '  caprice/ 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  I4e 

he  could  have  dispensed  with  ?  Was  she  not  to  him 
in  very  deed  a  Morning-Star ;  did  not  her  presence 
bring  with  it  airs  from  Heaven  ?  As  from  ^Eolian 
Harps  in  the  breath  of  dawn,  as  from  the  Memnon's 
Statue  struck  by  the  rosy  finger  of  Aurora,  unearthly 
music  was  around  him,  and  lapped  him  into  untried 
balmy  Rest.  Pale  Doubt  fled  away  to  the  distance  ; 
Life  bloomed-up  with  happiness  and  hope.  The  past, 
then,  was  all  a  haggard  dream  ;  he  had  been  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  then,  and  could  not  discern  it  !  But 
lo  now  !  the  black  walls  of  his  prison  melt  away  ;  the 
captive  is  alive,  is  free.  If  he  loved  his  Disenchantress  ? 
Ac/i  Gott !  His  whole  heart  and  soul  and  life  were  hers, 
but  never  had  he  named  it  Love  :  existence  was  all  a 
Feeling,  not  yet  shaped  into  a  thought." 

Nevertheless,  into  a  Thought,  nay  into  an  Action,  it 
must  be  shaped  ;  for  neither  Disenchanter  nor  Disen- 
chantress, mere  "Children  of  Time,"  can  abide  by 
Feeling  alone.  The  Professor  knows  not,  to  this  day, 
"how  in  her  soft,  fervid  bosom  the  Lovely  found  deter- 
mination, even  on  hest  of  Necessity,  to  cut  asunder 
these  so  blissful  bonds."  He  even  appears  surprised 
at  the  "  Duenna  Cousin,"  whoever  she  may  have  been, 
"in  whose  meagre,  hunger-bitten  philosophy,  the  re- 
ligion of  young  hearts  was,  from  the  first,  faintly  ap- 
proved of. "  We,  even  at  such  distance,  can  explain  it 
without  necromancy.  Let  the  philosopher  answer  this 
one  question.  What  figure,  at  that  period,  was  a  Mrs. 
Teufelsdrockh  likely  to  make  in  polished  society? 
Could  she  have  driven  so  much  as  a  brass-bound  Gig, 
or  even  a  simple  iron-spring  one  ?  Thou  foolish  "  ab- 
solved Auscultator,"  before  whom  lies  no  prospect  of 
capital,  will  any  yet  known  "religion  of  young  hearts  " 
keep  the  human  kitchen  warm  ?  Pshaw  !  thy  divine 
10 


146  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Blumine,  when  she  "resigned  herself  to  wed  some 
richer,  "shows  more  philosophy,  though  but  "a  woman 
of  genius,"  than  thou,  a  pretended  man. 

Our  readers  have  witnessed  the  origin  of  this  Love- 
mania,  and  with  what  royal  splendor  it  waxes,  and 
rises.  Let  no  one  ask  us  to  unfold  the  glories  of  its 
dominant  state  ;  much  less  the  horrors  of  its  almost  in- 
stantaneous dissolution.  How  from  such  inorganic 
masses,  henceforth  madder  than  ever,  as  lie  in  these 
Bags,  can  even  fragments  of  a  living  delineation  be 
organized?  Besides,  of  what  profit  were  it  ?  We  view, 
with  a  lively  pleasure,  the  gay  silk  Montgolfier  start 
from  the  ground,  and  shoot  upwards,  cleaving  the  liq- 
uid deeps,  till  it  dwindle  to  a  luminous  star  :  but  what 
is  there  to  look  longer  on,  when  once,  by  natural 
elasticity,  or  accident  of  fire,  it  has  exploded  ?  A  hap- 
less air-navigator,  plunging,  amid  torn  parachutes, 
sand-bags,  and  confused  wreck,  fast  enough  into  the 
jaws  of  the  Devil  ?  Suffice  it  to  know  that  Teufelsdrockh 
rose  into  the  highest  regions  of  the  Empyrean,  by  a 
natural  parabolic  track,  and  returned  thence  in  a  quick 
perpendicular  one.  For  the  rest,  let  any  feeling  reader, 
who  has  been  unhappy  enough  to  do  the  like,  paint  it 
out  for  himself :  considering  only  that  if  he,  for  his  per- 
haps comparatively  insignificant  mistress,  underwent 
such  agonies  and  frenzies,  what  must  Teufelsdrockh's 
have  been,  with  a  fire-heart,  and  for  a  nonpareil  Blu- 
mine !  We  glance  merely  at  the  final  scene  : 

"  One  morning,  he  found  his  Morning-star  all  dimmed 
and  dusky-red;  the  fair  creature  was  silent,  absent, 
she  seemed  to  have  been  weeping.  Alas,  no  longer  a 
Morning-star,  but  a  troublous  skyey  Portent,  announc- 
ing that  the  Doomsday  had  dawned  I  She  said,"  in  a 
tremulous  voice,  They  were  to  meet  no  more. "  Th« 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  147 

thunderstruck  Air-sailor  is  not  wanting  to  himself  in 
this  dread  hour  :  but  what  avails  it  ?  We  omit  the 
passionate  expostulations,  entreaties,  indignations, 
since  all  was  vain,  and  not  even  an  explanation  was 
conceded  him  ;  and  hasten  to  the  catastrophe.  "  '  Fare- 
well, then,  Madam ! '  said  he,  not  without  sternness, 
for  his  stung  pride  helped  him.  She  put  her  hand  in 
his,  she  looked  in  his  face,  tears  started  to  her  eyes  ;  in 
wild  audacity  he  clasped  her  to  his  bosom  ;  their  lips 
were  joined,  their  two  souls,  like  two  dew-drops,  rushed 
into  one, — for  the  first  time,  and  for  the  last  !  "  Thus 
was  Teufelsdrockh  made  immortal  by  a  kiss.  And 
then?  Why,  then — "thick  curtains  of  Night  rushed 
over  his  soul,  as  rose  the  immeasurable  Crash  of 
Doom  ;  and  through  the  ruins  as  of  a  shivered  Universe 
was  he  falling,  falling,  towards  the  Abyss. " 


I4&  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  VL 

SORROWS   OF  TEUFELSDROCKH. 

WE  have  long  felt  that,  with  a  man  like  our  Professor, 
matters  must  often  be  expected  to  take  a  course  of  their 
own  ;  that  in  so  multiplex,  intricate  a  nature,  there 
might  be  channels,  both  for  admitting  and  emitting, 
such  as  the  Psychologist  had  seldom  noted ;  in  short, 
that  on  no  grand  occasion  and  convulsion,  neither  in 
the  joy-storm  nor  in  the  woe-storm,  could  you  predict 
his  demeanor. 

To  our  less  philosophical  readers,  for  example,  it  is 
now  clear  that  the  so  passionate  Teufelsdrockh,  pre- 
cipitated through  "a shivered  Universe "  in  this  extraor- 
dinary way,  has  only  one  of  three  things  which  he  can 
next  do  :  Establish  himself  in  Bedlam  ;  begin  writing 
Satanic  poetry  ;  or  blow-out  his  brains.  In  the  progress 
towards  any  of  which  consummations,  do  not  such 
readers  anticipate  extravagance  enough ;  breast-beat- 
ing, brow-beating  (against  walls),  lion-bellowings  of 
blasphemy  and  the  like,  stampings,  smitings,  break- 
ages of  furniture,  if  not  arson  itself? 

Nowise  so  does  Teufelsdrockh  deport  him.  He 
quietly  lifts  his  Pilgerslab  (Pilgrim-staff),  "  old  business 
being  soon  wound-up  ; "  and  begins  a  perambulation 
and  circumambulation  of  the  terraqueous  Globe ! 
Curious  it  is,  indeed,  how  with  such  vivacity  of  con- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  149 

ception,  such  intensity  of  feeling,  above  all,  with  these 
unconscionable  habits  of  Exaggeration  in  speech,  he 
combines  that  wonderful  stillness  of  his,  that  stoicism 
in  external  procedure.  Thus,  if  his  sudden  bereave- 
ment, in  this  matter  of  the  Flower-goddess,  is  talked 
of  as  a  real  Doomsday  and  Dissolution  of  Nature,  in 
which  light  doubtless  it  partly  appeared  to  himself,  his 
own  nature  is  nowise  dissolved  thereby  ;  but  rather  is 
compressed  closer.  For  once,  as  we  might  say,  a 
Blumine  by  magic  appliances  has  unlocked  that  shut 
heart  of  his,  and  its  hidden  things  rush-out  tumultuous, 
boundless,  like  genii  enfranchised  from  their  glass 
phial :  but  no  sooner  are  your  magic  appliances  with- 
drawn, than  the  strange- casket  of  a  heart  springs-to 
again  ;  and  perhaps  there  is  now  no  key  extant  that 
will  open  it ;  for  a  Teufelsdrockh,  as  we  remarked,  will 
not  love  a  second  time.  Singular  Diogenes !  No 
sooner  has  that  heart-rending  occurrence  fairly  taken 
place,  than  he  affects  to  regard  it  as  a  thing  natural, 
of  which  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said.  "One 
highest  hope,  seemingly  legible  in  the  eyes  of  an 
Angel,  had  recalled  him  as  out  of  Death-shadows  into 
celestial  Life  :  but  a  gleam  of  Tophet  passed  over  the 
face  of  his  Angel ;  he  was  rapt  away  in  whirlwinds, 
and  heard  the  laughter  of  Demons.  It  was  a  Calen- 
ture," adds  he,  "whereby  the  Youth  saw  green 
Paradise-groves  in  the  waste  Ocean-waters  :  a  lying 
vision,  yet  not  wholly  a  lie,  for  he  saw  it.  But  what 
things  soever  passed  in  him,  when  he  ceased  to  see  it ; 
what  ragings  and  despairings  soever  Teufelsdro'ckh's 
soul  was  the  scene  of,  he  has  the  goodness  to  conceal 
under  a  quite  opaque  cover  of  Silence.  We  know  it 
well ;  the  first  mad  paroxysm  past,  our  brave  Gneschen 
collected  his  dismembered  philosophies,  and  buttoned 


150  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

himself  together ;  he  was  meek,  silent,  or  spoke  of  the 
weather  and  the  Journals  :  only  by  a  transiently  knit- 
ting of  those  shaggy  brows,  by  some  deep  flash  of 
those  eyes,  glancing  one  knew  not  whether  with  tear- 
dew  or  with  fierce  fire, — might  you  have  guessed  what 
a  Gehenna  was  within ;  that  a  whole  Satanic  School 
were  spouting,  though  inaudibly,  there.  To  consume 
your  own  choler,  as  some  chimneys  consume  their  own 
smoke  ;  to  keep  a  whole  Satanic  School  spouting,  if 
it  must  spout,  inaudibly,  is  a  negative  yet  no  slight 
virtue,  nor  one  of  the  commonest  in  these  times. 

Nevertheless,  we  will  not  take  upon  us  to  say,  that 
in  the  strange  measure  he  fell  upon,  there  was  not  a 
touch  of  latent  Insanity ;  whereof  indeed  the  actual 
condition  of  these  Documents  in  Capricornus  and 
Aquarius  is  no  bad  emblem.  His  so  unlimited  Wan- 
derings, toilsome  enough,  are  without  assigned  or  per- 
haps assignable  aim  ;  internal  Unrest  seems  his  sole 
guidance ;  he  wanders,  wanders,  as  if  that  curse  of  the 
Prophet  had  fallen  on  him,  and  he  were  "made  like 
unto  a  wheel."  Doubtless,  too,  the  chaotic  nature 
of  these  Paper-bags  aggravates  our  obscurity.  Quite 
without  note  of  preparation,  for  example,  we  come 
upon  the  following  slip  :  "A  peculiar  feeling  it  is  that 
will  rise  in  the  Traveller,  when  turning  some  hill-range 
in  his  desert  road,  he  descries  lying  far  below,  em- 
bosomed among  its  groves  and  green  natural  bulwarks, 
and  all  diminished  to  a  toybox,  the  fair  Town,  where  so 
many  souls,  as  it  were  seen  and  yet  unseen,  are  driving 
their  multifarious  traffic.  Its  white  steeple  is  then 
truly  a  starward-pointing  finger ;  the  canopy  of  blue 
smoke  seems  like  a  sort  of  Life-breath  :  for  always,  of 
its  own  unity,  the  soul  gives  unity  to  whatsoever  it 
looks  on  with  love;  thus  does  the  little  Dwelling-place 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  15 1 

of  men,  in  itself  a  congeries  of  houses  and  huts,  become 
for  us  an  individual,  almost  a  person.  But  what 
thousand  other  thoughts  unite  thereto,  if  the  place  has 
to  ourselves  been  the  arena  of  joyous  or  mournful 
experiences  ;  if  perhaps  the  cradle  we  were  rocked  in 
still  stands  there,  if  our  Loving  ones  still  dwell  there, 
if  our  Buried  ones  there  slumber !  "  Does  Teufels- 
drockh,  as  the  wounded  eagle  is  said  to  make  for  its 
own  eyrie,  and  indeed  military  deserters,  and  all  hunted 
outcast  creatures,  turn  as  if  by  instinct  in  the  direction 
of  their  birthland, — fly  first,  in  this  extremity,  towards 
his  native  Entepfuhl  ;  but  reflecting  that  there  no  help 
awaits  him,  take  only  one  wistful  look  from  the  dis' 
tance,  and  then  wend  elsewhither  ? 

Little  happier  seems  to  be  his  next  flight  :  into  the 
wilds  of  Nature  ;  as  if  in  her  mother-bosom  he  would 
seek  healing.  So  at  least  we  incline  to  interpret  the 
following  Notice,  separated  from  the  former  by  some 
considerable  space,  wherein,  however,  is  nothing  note- 
worthy : 

"  Mountains  were  not  new  to  him  ;  but  rarely  are 
Mountains  seen  in  such  combined  majesty  and  grace 
as  here.  The  rocks  are  of  that  sort  called  Primitive  by 
the  mineralogists,  which  always  arrange  themselves  in 
masses  of  a  rugged,  gigantic  character  ;  which  rugged- 
ness,  however,  is  here  tempered  by  a  singular  airiness 
of  form,  and  softness  of  environment  :  in  a  climate 
favorable  to  vegetation,  the  gray  cliff,  itself  covered 
with  lichens,  shoots-up  through  a  garment  of  foliage 
or  verdure ;  and  white,  bright  cottages,  tree-shaded, 
cluster  around  the  everlasting  granite.  In  fine  vicissi- 
tude, Beauty  alternates  with  Grandeur  :  you  ride  through 
stony  hollows,  along  strait  passes,  traversed  by  torrents, 
overhung  by  high  walls  of  rock  ;  now  winding  amid 


152  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

broken  shaggy  chasms,  and  huge  fragments  ;  now  sud- 
denly emerging  into  some  emerald  valley,  where  the 
streamlet  collects  itself  into  a  Lake,  and  man  has  again 
found  a  fair  dwelling,  and  it  seems  as  if  Peace  had 
established  herself  in  the  bosom  of  Strength. 

"To  Peace,  however,  in  this  vortex  of  existence  can 
the  Son  of  Time  not  pretend  :  still  less  if  some  Spectre 
haunt  him  from  the  Past ;  and  the  Future  is  wholly  a 
Stygian  Darkness,  spectre-bearing.  Reasonably  might 
the  Wanderer  exclaim  to  himself :  Are  not  the  gates  of 
this  world's  Happiness  inexorably  shut  against  thee  ; 
hast  thou  a  hope  that  is  not  mad?  Nevertheless,  one 
may  still  murmur  audibly,  or  in  the  original  Greek  if 
that  suit  thee  better  :  '  Whoso  can  look  on  death  will 
start  no  shadows.' 

"  From  such  meditations  is  the  Wanderer's  attention 
called  outwards  ;  for  now  the  Valley  closes-in  abruptly, 
intersected  by  a  huge  mountain  mass,  the  stony  water- 
worn  ascent  of  which  is  not  to  be  accomplished  on 
horseback.  Arrived  aloft,  he  finds  himself  again  lifted 
into  the  evening  sunset  light ;  and  cannot  but  pause, 
and  gaze  round  him,  some  moments  there.  An  upland 
irregular  expanse  of  wold,  where  valleys  in  complex 
branchings  are  suddenly  or  slowly  arranging  their 
descent  towards  every  quarter  of  the  sky.  The  mount- 
ain-ranges are  beneath  your  feet,  and  folded  together: 
only  the  loftier  summits  look  down  here  and  there  as 
on  a  second  plain  ;  lakes  also  lie  clear  and  earnest  in 
their  solitude.  No  trace  of  man  now  visible  ;  unless 
indeed  it  were  he  who  fashioned  that  little  visible  link 
of  Highway,  here,  as  would  seem,  scaling  the  inac- 
cessible, to  unite  Province  with  Province.  But  sun- 
wards, lo  you  {  how  it  towers  sheer  up,  a  world  of 
Mountains,  the  diadem  and  centre  of  the  mountain 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  153 

region  !  A  hundred  and  a  hundred  savage  peaks,  in  the 
last  light  of  Day ;  all  glowing,  of  gold  and  amethyst, 
like  giant  spirits  of  the  wilderness  ;  there  in  their 
silence,  in  their  solitude,  even  as  on  the  night  when 
Noah's  Deluge  first  dried  !  Beautiful,  nay  solemn, 
was  the  sudden  aspect  to  our  Wanderer.  He  gazed 
over  those  stupendous  masses  with  wonder,  almost 
with  longing  desire ;  never  till  this  hour  had  he 
known  Nature,  that  she  was  One,  that  she  was  his 
Mother  and  divine.  And  as  the  ruddy  glow  was  fad- 
ing into  clearness  in  the  sky,  and  the  Sun  had  now 
departed,  a  murmur  of  Eternity  and  Immensity,  of 
Death  and  of  Life,  stole  through  his  soul ;  and  he  felt 
as  if  Death  and  Life  were  one,  as  if  the  Earth  were  not 
dead,  as  if  the  Spirit  of  the  Earth  had  its  throne  in  that 
splendor,  and  his  own  spirit  were  therewith  holding 
communion. 

"The  spell  was  broken  by  a  sound  of  carriage- 
wheels.  Emerging  from  the  hidden  Northward,  to 
"sink  soon  into  the  hidden  Southward,  came  a  gay 
Barouche-and-four  :  it  was  open  ;  servants  and  pos- 
tillions wore  wedding-favors  :  that  happy  pair,  then, 
had  found  each  other,  it  was  their  marriage  evening ! 
Few  moments  brought  them  near  :  Du  Himmel!  It 
Was  Herr  Towgood  and — Blumine  !  With  slight  unrec- 
ognizing  salutation  they  passed  me  ;  plunged  down 
amid  the  neighboring  thickets,  onwards,  to  Heaven, 
and  to  England  ;  and  I,  in  my  friend  Richter's  words, 
I  remained  alone,  behind  them,  wilh  the  Night" 

Were  it  not  cruel  in  these  circumstances,  here  might 
be  the  place  to  insert  an  observation,  gleaned  long  ago 
from  the  great  Clothes- Volume,  where  it  stands  with 
quite  other  intent :  "Some  time  before  Small-pox  was 
extirpated,"  says  the  Professor,  "there  came  a  new 


*54  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

malady  of  the  spiritual  sort  on  Europe  :  I  mean  the 
epidemic,  now  endemical,  of  View-hunting.  Poets  of 
old  date,  being  privileged  with  Senses,  had  also  enjoyed 
external  Nature ;  but  chiefly  as  we  enjoy  the  crystal 
cup  which  holds  good  or  bad  liquor  for  us  ;  that  is  to 
say,  in  silence,  or  with  slight  incidental  commentary  : 
never,  as  I  compute,  till  after  the  Sorrows  of  Werter, 
was  there  man  found  who  would  say  :  Come  let  us 
make  a  Description  !  Having  drunk  the  liquor,  come 
let  us  eat  the  glass  !  Of  which  endemic  the  Jenner  is 
unhappily  still  to  seek."  Too  true  ! 

We  reckon  it  more  important  to  remark  that  the  Pro- 
fessor's Wanderings,  so  far  as  his  stoical  and  cynical 
envelopment  admits  us  to  clear  insight,  here  first  take 
their  permanent  character,  fatuous  or  not.  That  Basi- 
lisk-glance of  the  Barouche-and-four  seems  to  have 
withered-up  what  little  remnant  of  a  purpose  may  have 
still  lurked  in  him  :  Life  has  become  wholly  a  dark 
labyrinth  ;  wherein,  through  long  years,  our  Friend, 
flying  from  spectres,  has  to  stumble  about  at  random, 
and  naturally  with  more  haste  than  progress. 

Foolish  were  it  in  us  to  attempt  following  him,  even 
from  afar,  in  this  extraordinary  world-pilgrimage  of 
his  ;  the  simplest  record  of  which,  were  clear  record 
possible,  would  fill  volumes.  Hopeless  is  the  obscu- 
rity, unspeakable  the  confusion.  He  glides  from  country 
to  country,  from  condition  to  condition  ;  vanishing  and 
re-appearing,  no  man  can  calculate  how  or  where. 
Through  all  quarters  of  the  world  he  wanders,  and 
apparently  through  all  circles  of  society.  If  in  any 
scene,  perhaps  difficult  to  fix  geographically,  he  settles 
for  a  time,  and  forms  connections,  be  sure  he  will 
snap  them  abruptly  asunder.  Let  him  sink  out  of 
sight  as  Private  Scholar  (Privatisirender),  living  by  the 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  155 

grace  of  God  in  some  European  capital,  you  may  next 
find  him  as  Hadjee  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mecca.  It 
is  an  inexplicable  Phantasmagoria,  capricious,  quick- 
changing  ;  as  if  our  Traveller,  instead  of  limbs  and 
highways,  had  transported  himself  by  some  wishing- 
carpet,  or  Fortunatus'  Hat.  The  whole,  too,  imparted 
emblematically,  in  dim  multifarious  tokens  (as  that 
collection  of  Street-Advertisements)  ;  with  only  some 
touch  of  direct  historical  notice  sparingly  interspersed  : 
little  light-islets  in  the  world  of  haze  !  So  that,  from 
this  point,  the  Professor  is  more  of  an  enigma  than 
ever.  In  figurative  language,  we  might  say  he  be- 
comes, not  indeed  a  spirit,  yet  spiritualized,  vaporized. 
Fact  unparalleled  in  Biography  :  The  river  of  his  His- 
tory, which  we  have  traced  from  its  tiniest  fountains, 
and  hoped  to  see  flow  onward,  with  increasing  current, 
into  the  ocean,  here  dashes  itself  over  that  terrific 
Lover's  Leap  ;  and,  as  a  mad-foaming  cataract,  flies 
wholly  into  tumultuous  clouds  of  spray  !  Low  down 
it  indeed  collects  again  into  pools  and  plashes  ;  yet 
only  at  a  great  distance,  and  with  difficulty,  if  at  all, 
into  a  general  stream.  To  cast  a  glance  into  certain 
of  those  pools  and  plashes,  and  trace  whither  they  run, 
must,  for  a  chapter  or  two,  form  the  limit  of  our 
endeavor. 

For  which  end  doubtless  those  direct  historical 
Notices,  where  they  can  be  met  with,  are  the  best. 
Nevertheless,  of  this  sort  too  there  occurs  much,  which, 
with  our  present  light,  it  were  questionable  to  emit. 
Teufelsdrockh,  vibrating  everywhere  between  the  high- 
est and  the  lowest  levels,  comes  into  contact  with 
public  History  itself.  For  example,  those  conversa- 
tions and  relations  with  illustrous  Persons,  as  Sultan 
Mahmoud,  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  and  others,  are  they 


156  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

not  as  yet  rather  of  a  diplomatic  character  than  of  a 
biographic?  The  Editor,  appreciating  the  sacredness 
of  crowned  heads,  nay  perhaps  suspecting  the  possible 
trickeries  of  a  Clothes-Philosopher,  will  eschew  this 
province  for  the  present ;  a  new  time  may  bring  new 
insight  and  a  different  duty. 

If  we  ask  now,  not  indeed  with  what  ulterior  Pur- 
pose, for  there  was  none,  yet  with  what  immediate 
outlooks ;  at  all  events,  in  what  mood  of  mind,  the 
Professor  undertook  and  prosecuted  this  world-pilgrim- 
age,— the  answer  is  more  distinct  than  favorable. 
"A  nameless  Unrest,"  says  he,  "urged  me  forward; 
to  which  the  outward  motion  was  some  momentary 
lying  solace.  Whither  should  I  go  ?  My  Loadstars 
were  blotted  out  ;  in  that  canopy  of  grim  fire  shone  no 
star.  Yet  forward  must  I ;  the  ground  burnt  under  me ; 
there  was  no  rest  for  the  sole  of  my  foot.  I  was  alone, 
alone  !  Ever  too  the  strong  inward  longing  shaped 
Fantasms  for  itself :  towards  these,  one  after  the  other, 
must  I  fruitlessly  wander.  A  feeling  I  had,  that  for  my 
fever-thirst  there  was  and  must  be  somewhere  a  heal- 
ing Fountain.  To  many  fondly  imagined  Fountains, 
the  Saints'  Wells  of  these  days,  did  I  pilgrim  ;  to  great 
Men,  to  great  Cities,  to  great  Events  :  but  found  there 
no  healing.  In  strange  countries,  as  in  the  well-known, 
in  savage  deserts,  and  in  the  press  of  corrupt  civiliza- 
tion, it  was  ever  the  same  :  how  could  your  wanderer 
escape  from  —  his  own  Shadow  />  Nevertheless  still 
Forward  !  I  felt  as  if  in  great  haste  ;  to  do  I  saw  not 
what.  From  the  depths  of  my  own  heart,  it  called  to 
me,  Forwards  !  The  winds  and  the  streams,  and  all 
Nature  sounded  to  me,  Forwards  !  Ach  Gott,  I  was 
even,  once  for  all,  a  Son  of  Time." 

From  which  is  it  not  clear  that  the  internal  Satanic 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  157 

School  was  still  active  enough  ?  He  says  elsewhere  : 
"  The  Enchiridion  of  Epictetus  I  had  ever  with  me,  often 
as  my  sole  rational  companion  ;  and  regret  to  mention 
that  the  nourishment  it  yielded  was  trifling."  Thou 
foolish  Teufelsdrockh!  How  could  it  else?  Hadst 
thou  not  Greek  enough  to  understand  thus  much  :  T7ie 
end  of  Man  is  an  action,  and  not  a  Thought,  though  it 
were  the  noblest  ? 

"  How  I  lived  ? "  writes  he  once  :  "  Friend,  hast  thou 
considered  the  '  rugged  all-nourishing  Earth,'  as  Soph- 
ocles well  names  her  ;  how  she  feeds  the  sparrows  on 
the  house-top,  much  more  her  darling,  man  ?  While 
thou  stirrest  and  livest,  thou  hast  a  probability  of  vict- 
ual. My  breakfast  of  tea  has  been  cooked  by  a  Tartar 
woman,  with  water  of  the  Amur,  who  wiped  her  earth- 
en kettle  with  a  horse-tail.  I  have  roasted  wild-eggs 
in  the  sand  of  Sahara  ;  I  have  awakened  in  Paris  Eslra- 
pades  and  Vienna  Malzleins,  with  no  prospect  of  break- 
fast beyond  elemental  liquid.  That  I  had  my  Living  to 
seek  saved  me  from  Dying, — by  suicide.  In  our  busy 
Europe,  is  there  not  an  everlasting  demand  for  Intellect, 
in  the  chemical,  mechanical,  political,  religious,  edu- 
cational, commercial  departments  ?  In  Pagan  coun- 
tries, cannot  one  write  Fetiches  ?  Living !  Little 
knowest  thou  what  alchemy  is  in  an  inventive  Soul ; 
how,  as  with  its  little  finger,  it  can  create  provision 
enough  for  the  body  (of  a  Philosopher) ;  and  then,  as 
with  both  hands,  create  quite  other  than  provision  ; 
namely,  spectres  to  torment  itself  withal." 

Poor  Teufelsdrockh  !  Flying  with  Hunger  always 
parallel  to  him  ;  and  a  whole  Infernal  Chase  in  his  rear ; 
so  that  the  countenance  of  Hunger  is  comparatively  a 
friend's  !  Thus  must  he,  in  the  temper  of  ancient  Cain, 
or  of  the  modern  Wandering  Jew,— save  only  that  he 


158  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

feels  himself  not  guilty  and  but  suffering  the  pains  of 
guilt,  — wend  to  and  fro  with  aimless  speed.  Thus  must 
he,  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  Earth  (by  footprints), 
write  his  Sorrows  of  Teufehdrockh  ;  even  as  the  great 
Goethe,  in  passionate  words,  had  to  write  his  Sorrows  of 
Werier,  before  the  spirit  freed  herself,  and  he  could  be- 
come a  Man.  Vain  truly  is  the  hope  of  your  swiftest 
Runner  to  escape  "  from  his  own  Shadow  !  "  Never- 
theless, in  these  sick  days,  when  the  Born  of  Heaven  first 
descries  himself  (about  the  age  of  twenty)  in  a  world  such 
as  ours,  richer  than  usual  in  two  things,  in  Truths  grown 
obsolete,  and  Trades  grown  obsolete, — what  can  the 
fool  think  but  that  it  is  all  a  Den  of  Lies,  wherein  whoso 
will  not  speak  Lies  and  act  Lies,  must  stand  idle  and 
despair  ?  Whereby  it  happens  that,  for  your  nobler 
minds,  the  publishing  of  some  such  Work  of  Art,  in  one 
or  the  other  dialect,  becomes  almost  a  necessity.  For 
what  is  it  properly  but  an  Altercation  with  the  Devil, 
before  you  begin  honestly  Fighting  him  ?  Your  Byron 
publishes  his  Sorrows  of  Lord  George,  in  verse  and  in 
prose,  and  copiously  otherwise  :  your  Bonaparte  repre- 
sents his  Sorrows  of  Napoleon  Opera,  in  an  ail-too  stu- 
pendous style  ;  with  music  of  cannon-volleys,  and  mur- 
der-shrieks of  a  world  ;  his  stage-lights  are  the  fires  of 
Conflagration  ;  his  rhyme  and  recitative  are  the  tramp 
of  embattled  Hosts  and  the  sound  of  falling  Cities. — 
Happier  is  he  who,  like  our  Clothes-Philosopher,  can 
write  such  matter,  since  it  must  be  written,  on  the  in- 
sensible Earth,  with  his  shoe-soles  only  ;  and  also 
survive  the  writing  thereof  1 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


159 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  EVERLASTING   NO. 

UNDER  the  strange  nebulous  envelopment,  wherein 
our  Professor  has  now  shrouded  himself,  no  doubt  but 
his  spiritual  nature  is  nevertheless  progressive,  and 
growing  :  for  how  can  the  "Son  of  Time,"  in  any  case, 
stand  still  ?  We  behold  him,  through  those  dim  years, 
in  a  state  of  crisis,  of  transition  :  his  mad  Pilgrimings, 
and  general  solution  into  aimless  Discontinuity,  what 
is  all  this  but  a  mad  Fermentation  ;  wherefrom,  the 
fiercer  it  is,  the  clearer  product  will  one  day  evolve 
itself? 

Such  transitions  are  ever  full  of  pain  :  thus  the  Eagle 
when  he  moults  is  sickly  ;  and,  to  attain  his  new  beak, 
must  harshly  dash-off  the  old  one  upon  rocks.  What 
Stoicism  soever  our  Wanderer,  in  his  individual  acts 
and  motions,  may  affect,  it  is  clear  that  there  is  a  hot 
fever  of  anarchy  and  misery  raging  within  ;  corusca- 
tions of  which  flash  out :  as,  indeed,  how  could  there 
be  other?  Have  we  not  seen  him  disappointed, 
bemocked  of  Destiny,  through  long  years  ?  All  that  the 
young  heart  might  desire  and  pray  for  has  been  denied  ; 
nay,  as  in  the  last  worst  instance,  offered  and  then 
snatched  away.  Ever  an  "excellent  Passivity;"  but 
of  useful,  reasonable  Activity  essential  to  the  former 
as  Food  to  Hunger,  nothing  granted  :  till  at  length,  in 


160  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

this  wild  Pilgrimage,  he  must  forcibly  seize  for  him- 
self an  Activity,  though  useless,  unreasonable.  Alas, 
his  cup  of  bitterness,  which  had  been  filling  drop  by 
drop,  ever  since  that  first  "ruddy  morning"  in  the 
Hinterschlag  Gymnasium,  was  at  the  very  lip ;  and 
then  with  that  poison-drop,  of  the  To  wgood-and-Blumine 
business,  it  runs  over,  and  even  hisses  over  in  a  deluge 
of  foam. 

He  himself  says  once,  with  more  justice  than  origi- 
nality :  Man  is,  properly  speaking,  based  upon  Hope, 
he  has  no  other  possession  but  Hope  ;  this  world  of 
his  is  emphatically  the  "Place  of  Hope."  What,  then, 
was  our  Professor's  possession  ?  We  see  him,  for  the 
present,  quite  shut-out  from  Hope  ;  looking  not  into 
the  golden  orient,  but  vaguely  all  round  into  a  dim 
copper  firmament,  pregnant  with  earthquake  and 
tornado. 

Alas,  shut-out  from  Hope,  in  a  deeper  sense  than  we 
yet  dream  of!  For,  as  he  wanders  wearisomely 
through  this  world,  he  has  now  lost  all  tidings  of 
another  and  higher.  Full  of  religion,  or  at  least  of 
religiosity,  as  our  Friend  has  since  exhibited  himself, 
he  hides  not  that,  in  those  days,  he  was  wholly  irre- 
ligious :  "  Doubt  had  darkened  into  Unbelief,"  says  he  ; 
"shade  after  shade  goes  grimly  over  your  soul,  till  you 
have  the  fixed,  starless,  Tartarean  black."  To  such 
readers  as  have  reflected,  what  can  be  called  reflecting, 
on  man's  life,  and  happily  discovered,  in  contradiction 
to  much  Profit-and-Loss  Philosophy,  speculative  and 
practical,  that  Soul  is  not  synonymous  with  Stomach ; 
who  understand,  therefore,  in  our  Friend's  words, 
"that,  for  man's  well-being,  Faith  is  properly  the  one 
thing  needful ;  how,  with  it,  Martyrs,  otherwise  weak, 
can  cheerfully  endure  the  shame  and  the  cross ;  and 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  161 

without  it,  Worldlings  puke-up  their  sick  existence,  by 
suicide,  in  the  midst  of  luxury  :  "  to  such  it  will  be  clear 
that,  for  a  pure  moral  nature,  the  loss  of  his  religious 
Belief  was  the  loss  of  everything.  Unhappy  young 
man  !  All  wounds,  the  crush  of  long-continued 
Destitution,  the  stab  of  false  Friendship  and  of  false 
Love,  all  wounds  in  thy  so  genial  heart,  would  have 
healed  again,  had  not  its  life-warmth  been  withdrawn. 
Well  might  he  exclaim,  in  his  wild  way  :  "Is  there 
no  God,  then  ;  but  at  best  an  absentee  God,  sitting 
idle,  ever  since  the  first  Sabbath,  at  the  outside  of 
his  Universe,  and  seeing  it  go  ?  Has  the  word 
Duty  no  meaning  ;  is  what  we  call  Duty  no  divine 
Messenger  and  Guide,  but  a  false  earthly  Fantasm, 
made-up  of  Desire  and  Fear,  of  emanations  from 
the  Gallows  and  from  Doctor  Graham's  Celestial- 
Bed?  Happiness  of  an  approving  Conscience!  Did 
not  Paul  of  Tarsus,  whom  admiring  men  have  since 
named  Saint,  feel  that  he  was  ' '  the  chief  of  sinners  ;  " 
and  Nero  of  Rome,  jocund  in  spirit  (wohlgemulfi), 
spend  much  of  his  time  in  fiddling  ?  Foolish  Word- 
monger  and  Motive-grinder,  who  in  thy  Logic-mill  hast 
an  earthly  mechanism  for  the  Godlike  itself,  and  wouldst 
fain  grind  me  out  Virtue  from  the  husks  of  Pleasure,— 
I  tell  thee,  Nay  !  To  the  unregenerate  Prometheus 
Vinctus  of  a  man,  it  is  ever  the  bitterest  aggravation  of 
his  wretchedness  that  he  is  conscious  of  Virtue,  that  he 
feels  himself  the  victim  not  of  suffering  only,  but  of 
injustice.  What  then  ?  Is  the  heroic  inspiration  we 
name  Virtue  but  some  Passion  ;  some  bubble  of  the 
blood,  bubbling  in  the  direction  others  profit  by  ?  I 
know  not :  only  this  I  know,  If  what  thou  namest 
Happiness  be  our  true  aim,  then  are  we  all  astray. 
With  Stupidity  and  sound  Digestion  man 'may  front 
II 


1 62  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

much.  But  what,  in  these  dull  unimaginative  days, 
are  the  terrors  of  Conscience  to  the  diseases  of  the 
Liver  !  Not  on  Morality,  but  on  Cookery,  let  us  build 
our  .stronghold  :  there  brandishing  our  frying-pan,  as 
censer,  let  us  offer  sweet  incense  to  the  Devil,  and 
live  at  ease  on  the  fat  things  he  has  provided  for  his 
Elect !  " 

Thus  has  the  bewildered  Wanderer  to  stand,  as  so 
many  have  done,  shouting  question  after  question  into 
the  Sibyl-cave  of  Destiny,  and  receive  no  Answer  but 
an  Echo.  It  is  all  a  grim  Desert,  this  once  fair  world 
of  his ;  wherein  is  heard  only  the  howling  of  wild- 
beasts,  or  the  shrieks  of  despairing,  hate-filled  men  ;  and 
no  Pillar  of  Cloud  by  day,  and  no  Pillar  of  Fire  by  night, 
any  longer  guides  the  Pilgrim.  To  such  length  has  the 
spirit  of  Inquiry  carried  him.  "But  what  boots  it 
(was  Ihufs)?"  cries  he  :  "it  is  but  the  common  lot  in 
this  era.  Not  having  come  to  spiritual  majority  prior 
to  the  Siecle  de  Louis  Quinze,  and  not  being  born  purely 
a  Loghead  (Dummkop/),  thou  hadst  no  other  outlook. 
The  whole  world  is,  like  thee,  soul  to  Unbelief ;  their 
old  Temples  of  the  Godhead,  which  for  long  have  not 
been  rainproof,  crumble  down  ;  and  men  ask  now  : 
Where  is  the  Godhead  ;  our  eyes  never  saw  him  ?  " 

Pitiful  enough  were  it,  for  all  these  wild  utterances, 
to  call  our  Diogenes  wicked.  Unprofitable  servants  as 
we  all  are,  perhaps  at  no  era  of  his  life  was  he  more 
decisively  the  Servant  of  Goodness,  the  Servant  of  God, 
than  even  now  when  doubting  God's  existence.  "One 
circumstance  I  note,"  says  he  :  "after  all  the  nameless 
woe  that  Inquiry,  which  for  me,  what  it  is  not  always, 
was  genuine  Love  of  Truth,  had  wrought  me,  I  never- 
theless still  loved  Truth,  and  would  bate  no  jot  of  my 
allegiance  to  her.  '  Truth  ! '  I  cried,  '  though  the 


SAKTOK  RESARTUS.  X6» 

Heavens  crush  me  for  following  her  :  no  Falsehood  ! 
though  a  whole  celestial  Lubberland  were  the  price  of 
Apostasy.'  In  conduct  it  was  the  same.  Had  a  divine 
Messenger  from  the  clouds,  or  miraculous  Handwriting 
on  the  wall,  convincingly  proclaimed  to  me  This  ihou 
shall  do,  with  what  passionate  readiness,  as  I  often 
thought,  would  I  have  done  it,  had  it  been  leaping  into 
the  infernal  Fire.  Thus,  in  spite  of  all  Motive-grinders, 
and  Mechanical  Profit-and-Loss  Philosophies,  with  the 
sick  ophthalmia  and  hallucination  they  had  brought  on, 
was  the  Infinite  nature  of  Duty  still  dimly  present  to 
me  :  living  without  God  in  the  world,  of  God's  light  I 
was  not  utterly  bereft  ;  if  my  as  yet  sealed  eyes,  with 
their  unspeakable  longing,  could  nowhere  see  Him, 
nevertheless  in  my  heart  He  was  present,  and  His 
heaven-written  Law  still  stood  legible  and  sacred  there. " 

Meanwhile,  under  all  these  tribulations,  and  temporal 
and  spiritual  destitutions,  what  must  the  Wanderer,  in 
his  silent  soul,  have  endured!  "The  painfullest  feel- 
ing," writes  he,  "is  that  of  your  own  Feebleness 
(Unkraft)  ;  ever,  as  the  English  Milton  says,  to  be 
weak  is  the  true  misery.  And  yet  of  your  Strength 
there  is  and  can  be  no  clear  feeling,  save  by  what  you 
have  prospered  in,  by  what  you  have  done.  Between 
vague  wavering  Capability  and  fixed  undubitable  Per- 
formance, what  a  difference  !  A  certain  inarticulate 
Self-consciousness  dwells  dimly  in  us ;  which  only  our 
Works  can  render  articulate  and  decisively  discernible. 
Our  Works  are  the  mirror  wherein  the  spirit  first  sees 
its  natural  lineaments.  Hence,  too,  the  folly  of  that 
impossible  Precept,  Know  thyself ;  till  it  be  translated 
into  this  partially  possible  one,  Know  what  Ihou  canst 
work  at. 

"But  for  me,  so  strangely  unprosperous  had  I  been, 


164  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

the  net-result  of  my  Workings  amounted  as  yet  simply 
to — Nothing.  How  then  could  I  believe  in  my 
Strength,  when  there  was  as  yet  no  mirror  to  see  it  in  ? 
Ever  did  this  agitating,  yet,  as  I  now  perceive,  quite 
frivolous  question,  remain  to  me  insoluble  :  Hast  thou 
a  certain  Faculty,  a  certain  Worth,  such  even  as  the 
most  have  not ;  or  art  thou  the  completest  Dullard  of 
these  modern  times  ?  Alas,  the  fearful  Unbelief  is  un- 
belief in  yourself;  and  how  could  I  believe?  Had  not 
my  first,  last  Faith  in  myself,  when  even  to  me  the 
Heavens  seemed  laid  open,  and  I  dared  to  love,  been 
ail-too  cruelly  belied?  The  Speculative  Mystery  of 
Life  grew  ever  more  mysterious  to  me  :  neither  in  the 
practical  Mystery  had  I  made  the  slightest  progress, 
but  been  everywhere  buffeted,  foiled,  and  contemptu- 
ously cast  out.  A  feeble  unit  in  the  middle  of  a 
threatening  Infinitude,  I  seemed  to  have  nothing  given 
me  but  eyes,  whereby  to  discern  my  own  wretched- 
ness. Invisible  yet  impenetrable  walls,  as  of  Enchant- 
ment, divided  me  from  all  living  :  was  there,  in  the 
wide  world,  any  true  bosom  I  could  press  trustfully  to 
mine  ?  O  Heaven,  No,  there  was  none !  I  kept  a 
lock  upon  my  lips  :  why  should  I  speak  much  with 
that  shifting  variety  of  so-called  Friends,  in  whose 
withered,  vain  and  too- hungry  souls  Friendship  was 
but  an  incredible  tradition  ?  In  such  cases,  your  re- 
source is  to  talk  little,  and  that  little  mostly  from  the 
Newspapers.  Now  when  I  look  back,  it  was  a  strange 
isolation  I  then  lived  in.  The  men  and  women 
around  me,  even  speaking  with  me,  were  but  Figures  ; 
I  had,  practically,  forgotten  that  they  were  alive,  that 
they  were  not  merely  automatic.  In  the  midst  of  their 
crowded  streets  and  assemblages,  I  walked  solitary ; 
and  (except  as  it  was  my  own  heart,  not  another's, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  T6- 

that  I  kept  devouring)  savage  also,  as  the  tiger  in  his 
jungle.  Some  comfort  it  would  have  been,  could  I, 
like  a  Faust,  have  fancied  myself  tempted  and  tor- 
mented of  the  Devil :  for  a  Hell,  as  I  imagine,  without 
Life,  though  only  diabolic  Life,  were  more  frightful : 
but  in  our  age  of  Down-pulling  and  Disbelief,  the  very 
Devil  has  been  pulled  down,  you  cannot  so  much  as 
believe  in  a  Devil.  To  me  the  f  niverse  was  all  void 
of  Life,  of  Purpose,  of  Volition,  even  of  Hostility  :  it 
was  one  huge,  dead,  immeasurable  Steam-engine,  roll- 
ing on,  in  its  dead  indifference,  to  grind  me  limb  from 
limb.  O,  the  vast,  gloomy,  solitary  Golgotha,  and 
Mill  of  Death  !  Why  was  the  Living  banished  thither 
companionless,  conscious  ?  Why,  if  there  is  no  Devil ; 
nay,  unless  the  Devil  is  your  God  ?  " 

A  prey  incessantly  to  such  corrosions,  might  not, 
moreover,  as  the  worst  aggravation  to  them,  the  iron 
constitution  even  of  a  Teufelsdrockh  threaten  to  fail  ? 
We  conjecture  that  he  has  known  sickness ;  and,  in 
spite  of  his  locomotive  habits,  perhaps  sickness  of  the 
chronic  sort.  Hear  this,  for  example  :  "  How  beauti- 
ful to  die  of  broken-heart,  on  Paper !  Quite  another 
thing  in  practice  ;  every  window  of  your  Feeling,  even 
of  your  Intellect,  as  it  were,  begrimed  and  mud-be- 
spattered, so  that  no  pure  ray  can  enter ;  a  whole  Drug- 
shop  in  your  inwards ;  the  fordone  soul  drowning 
slowly  in  quagmires  of  Disgust ! " 

Putting  all  which  external  and  internal  miseries  to- 
gether, may  we  not  find  in  the  following  sentences, 
quite  in  our  Professor's  still  vein,  significance  enough  ? 
"From  Suicide  a  certain  aftershine  (Nachscheiri)  of 
Christianity  withheld  me  :  perhaps  also  a  certain  in- 
dolence of  character ;  for,  was  not  that  a  remedy  I  had 
at  any  time  within  reach  ?  Often,  however,  was  there 


166  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

a  question  present  to  me  :  Should  some  one  now,  at 
the  turning  of  that  corner,  blow  thee  suddenly  out  of 
Space,  into  the  other  World,  or  other  No-world,  by 
pistol-shot, — how  were  it?  On  which  ground,  too,  I 
have  often,  in  sea-storms  and  sieged  cities  and  other 
death-scenes,  exhibited  an  imperturbability,  which 
passed,  falsely  enough,  for  courage." 

"So  had  it  lasted,"  concludes  the  Wanderer,  "so  had 
it  lasted,  as  in  bitter  protracted  Death-agony,  through 
long  years.  The  heart  within  me,  un visited  by  any 
heavenly  dewdrop,  was  smouldering  in  sulphurous, 
slow-consuming  fire.  Almost  since  earliest  memory  I 
had  shed  no  tear  ;  or  once  only  when  I,  murmuring 
half-audibly,  recited  Faust's  Deathsong,  that  wild  Selig 
der  den  er  im  Siegesglanze  findet  (Happy  whom  he  finds 
in  Battle's  splendor),  and  thought  that  of  this  last  Friend 
even  I  was  not  forsaken,  that  Destiny  itself  could  not 
doom  me  not  to  die.  Having  no  hope,  neither  had  I 
any  definite  fear,  were  it  of  Man  or  of  Devil :  nay,  I 
often  felt  as  if  it  might  be  solacing,  could  the  Arch- 
Devil  himself,  though  in  Tartarean  terrors,  but  rise  to 
me,  that  I  might  tell  him  a  little  of  my  mind.  And  yet, 
strangely  enough,  I  lived  in  a  continual,  indefinite, 
pining  fear ;  tremulous,  pusillanimous,  apprehensive 
of  I  knew  not  what :  it  seemed  as  if  all  things  in  the 
Heavens  above  and  the  Earth  beneath  would  hurt  me  ; 
as  if  the  Heavens  and  the  Earth  were  but  boundless 
jaws  of  a  devouring  monster,  wherein  I,  palpitating, 
waited  to  be  devoured. 

"Full  of  such  humor,  and  perhaps  the  miserablest 
man  in  the  whole  French  Capital  or  Suburbs,  was  I,  one 
sultry  Dogday,  after  much  perambulation,  toiling  along 
the  dirty  little  Rue  Saint-Thomas  de  FEnfer,  among 
civic  rubbish  enough,  in  a  close  atmosphere,  and  over 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  1 67 

pavements  hot  as  Nebuchadnezzar's  Furnace;  whereby 
doubtless  my  spirits  were  little  cheered  ;  when,  all  at 
once,  there  rose  a  Thought  in  me,  and  I  asked  myself : 
'What  ar/thou  afraid  of?  Wherefore,  like  a  coward, 
dost  thou  forever  pip  and  whimper,  and  go  cowering 
and  trembling  ?  Despicable  biped  !  what  is  the  sum- 
total  of  the  worst  that  lies  before  thee  ?  Death  ?  Well, 
Death ;  and  say  the  pangs  of  Tophet  too,  and  all  that 
the  Devil  and  Man  may,  will  or  can  do  against  thee  ! 
Hast  thou  not  a  heart ;  canst  thou  not  suffer  whatso- 
ever it  be  ;  and,  as  a  Child  of  Freedom,  though  outcast, 
trample  Tophet  itself  under  thy  feet,  while  it  consumes 
thee  ?  Let  it  come,  then  ;  I  will  meet  it  and  defy  it ! ' 
And  as  I  so  thought,  there  rushed  like  a  stream  of  fire 
over  my  whole  soul ;  and  I  shook  base  Fear  away 
from  me  forever.  I  was  strong,  of  unknown  strength  ; 
a  spirit,  almost  a  god.  Ever  from  that  time,  the  temper 
of  my  misery  was  changed  :  not  Fear  or  whining  Sorrow 
was  it,  but  Indignation  and  grim  fire-eyed  Defiance. 

"Thus  had  the  EVERLASTING  No  (das  ewige  Neiri) 
pealed  authoritatively  through  all  the  recesses  of  my 
Being,  of  my  ME  ;  and  then  was  it  that  my  whole  ME 
stood  up,  in  native  God-created  majesty,  and  with  em- 
phasis recorded  its  Protest.  Such  a  Protest,  the  most 
important  transaction  in  Life,  may  that  same  Indigna- 
tion and  Defiance,  in  a  psychological  point  of  view,  be 
fitly  called.  The  Everlasting  No  had  said  :  '  Behold, 
thou  art  fatherless,  outcast,  and  the  Universe  is  mine 
(the  Devil's)  ; '  to  which  my  whole  ME  now  made  an- 
swer :  '/  am  not  thine,  but  Free,  and  forever  hate  thee  ! ' 

"  It  is  from  this  hour  that  I  incline  to  date  my  Spirit- 
ual New-birth,  or  Baphometic  Fire-baptism  ;  perhaps 
I  directly  thereupon  began  to  be  a  Man. " 


1 63  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

CENTRE    OF    INDIFFERENCE. 

THOUGH,  after  this  "  Baphometic  Fire-baptism "  of 
his,  our  Wanderer  signifies  that  his  Unrest  was  but  in- 
creased ;  as,  indeed,  "Indignation  and  Defiance," 
especially  against  things  in  general,  are  not  the  most 
peaceable  inmates  ;  yet  can  the  Psychologist  surmise 
that  it  was  no  longer  a  quite  hopeless  Unrest ;  that 
henceforth  it  had  at  least  a  fixed  centre  to  revolve 
round.  For  the  fire-baptized  soul,  long  so  scathed  and 
thunder-driven,  here  feels  its  own  Freedom,  which 
feeling  is  its  Baphometic  Baptism  ;  the  citadel  of  its 
whole  kingdom  it  has  thus  gained  by  assault,  and  will 
keep  inexpugnable  ;  outwards  from  which  the  remain- 
ing dominions,  not  indeed  without  hard  battling,  will 
doubtless  by  degrees  be  conquered  and  pacificated. 
Under  another  figure,  we  might  say,  if  in  that  great 
moment,  in  the  Rue  Saint-Thomas  dc  l'E?ifer,  the  old 
inward  Satanic  School  was  not  yet  thrown  out  of 
doors,  it  received  peremptory  judicial  notice  to  quit  ; — 
whereby,  for  the  rest,  its  howl-chantings,  Ernulphus- 
cursings,  and  rebellious  gnashings  of  teeth,  might,  in 
the  meanwhile,  become  only  the  more  tumultuous, 
and  difficult  to  keep  secret. 

Accordingly,  if  we  scrutinize  these  Pilgrimings  well, 
there  is  perhaps  discernible  henceforth  a  certain  in- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  169 

cipient  method  in  their  madness.  Not  wholly  as  a 
Spectre  does  Teufelsdrockh  now  storm  through  the 
world ;  at  worst  as  a  spectre-fighting  Man,  nay  who 
will  one  day  be  a  Spectre-queller.  If  piigriming  rest- 
lessly to  so  many  "Saints' Wells, "  and  ever  without 
quenching  of  his  thirst,  he  nevertheless  finds  little  sec- 
ular wells,  whereby  from  time  to  time  some  alleviation 
is  ministered.  In  a  word,  he  is  now,  if  not  ceasing, 
yet  intermitting  to  "  eat  his  own  heart  ;  "  and  clutches 
round  him  outwardly  on  the  NOT-ME  for  wholesomer 
food.  Does  not  the  following  glimpse  exhibit  him  in  a 
much  more  natural  state  ? 

"Towns  also  and  Cities,'  especially  the  ancient,  I 
failed  not  to  look  upon  with  interest.  How  beautiful 
to  see  thereby,  as  through  a  long  vista,  into  the  remote 
Time  ;  to  have  as  it  were,  an  actual  section  of  almost 
the  earliest  Past  brought  safe  into  the  Present,  and  set 
before  your  eyes  !  There,  in  that  old  City,  was  a  live 
ember  of  Culinary  Fire  put  down,  say  only  two  thou- 
sand years  ago ;  and  there,  burning  more  or  less 
triumphantly,  with  such  fuel  as  the  region  yielded,  it 
has  burnt,  and  still  burns,  and  thou  thyself  seest  the 
very  smoke  thereof !  Ah  !  and  the  far  more  mysterious 
live  ember  of  Vital  Fire  was  then  also  put  down  there  ; 
and  still  miraculously  burns  and  spreads ;  and  the 
smoke  and  ashes  thereof  (in  these  Judgment-Halls 
and  Churchyards),  and  its  bellows-engines  (in  these 
Churches),  thou  still  seest ;  and  its  flame,  looking  out 
from  every  kind  countenance,  and  every  hateful  one, 
still  warms  thee  or  scorches  thee. 

' '  Of  Man's  Activity  and  Attainment  the  chief  results 
are  aeriform,  mystic,  and  preserved  in  Tradition  only  : 
such  are  his  Forms  of  Government,  with  the  Authority 
they  rest  on  ;  his  Customs,  or  Fashions  both  of  Cloth- 


170  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

habits  and  of  Soul-habits ;  much  more  his  collective 
stock  of  Handicrafts,  the  whole  Faculty  he  has  acquired 
of  manipulating  Nature  :  all  these  things,  as  indispens- 
able and  priceless  as  they  are,  cannot  in  any  way  be 
fixed  under  lock  and  key,  but  must  flit,  spirit-like,  on 
impalpable  vehicles,  from  Father  to  Son  ;  if  you  de- 
mand sight  of  them,  they  are  nowhere  to  be  met  with. 
Visible  Ploughmen  and  Hammermen  there  have  been 
ever,  from  Cain  and  Tubalcain  dowTn wards  :  but  where 
does  your  accumulated  Agricultural,  Metallurgic,  and 
other  Manufacturing  SKILL  lie  warehoused  ?  It  trans- 
mits itself  on  the  atmospheric  air,  on  the  sun's  rays  (by 
Hearing  and  by  Vision);  it  is  a  thing  aeriform,  impal- 
pable, of  quite  spiritual  sort.  In  like  manner,  ask  me 
not,  Where  are  the  LAWS  ;  where  is  the  GOVERNMENT  ? 
In  vain  wilt  thou  go  to  Schonbrunn,  to  Downing  Street, 
to  the  Palais  Bourbon  :  thou  findest  nothing  there  but 
brick  or  stone  houses,  and  some  bundles  of  Papers  tied 
with  tape.  Where,  then,  is  that  same  cunningly-de- 
vised almighty  GOVERNMENT  of  theirs  to  be  laid  hands 
on  ?  Everywhere,  yet  nowhere :  seen  only  in  its 
works,  this  too  is  a  thing  aeriform,  invisible;  or  if  you 
will,  mystic  and  miraculous.  So  spiritual  (geistig)  is 
our  whole  daily  Life  :  all  that  we  do  springs  out  of 
Mystery,  Spirit,  invisible  Force;  only  like  a  little  Cloud- 
image,  or  Armida's  Palace,  air-built,  does  the  Actual 
body  itself  forth  from  the  great  mystic  Deep. 

"Visible  and  tangible  products  of  the  Past,  again,  I 
reckon-up  to  the  extent  of  three  :  Cities,  with  their 
Cabinets  and  Arsenals  ;  then  tilled  Fields,  to  either  or 
to  both  of  which  divisions  Roads  with  their  Bridges 

may  belong ;    and  thirdly Books.     In  which  third 

truly,  the  last  invented,  lies  a  worth  far  surpassing  that 
of  the  two  others.  Wondrous  indeed  is  the  virtue  of  a 


SARTOK  RESARTUS.  171 

true  Book.  Not  like  a  dead  city  of  stones,  yearly 
crumbling,  yearly  needing  repair;  more  like  a  tilled 
field,  but  then  a  spiritual  field  :  like  a  spiritual  tree,  let 
me  rather  say,  it  stands  from  year  to  year,  and  from 
age  to  age  (we  have  Books  that  already  number  some 
hundred-and-fifty  human  ages)  ;  and  yearly  comes  its 
new  produce  of  leaves  (Commentaries,  Deductions, 
Philosophical,  Political  Systems  ;  or  were  it  only  Ser- 
mons, Pamphlets,  Journalistic  Essays),  every  one  of 
which  is  talismanic  and  thaumaturgic,  for  it  can  per- 
suade men.  O  thou  who  art  able  to  write  a  Book, 
which  once  in  the  two  centuries  or  oftener  there  is  a 
man  gifted  to  do,  envy  not  him  whom  they  name  City- 
builder,  and  inexpressibly  pity  him  whom  they  name 
Conqueror  or  City-burner  !  Thou  too  art  a  Conqueror 
and  Victor;  but  of  the  true  sort,  namely  over  the  Devil  : 
thou  too  hast  built  what  will  outlast  all  marble  and 
metal,  and  be  a  wonder-bringing  City  of  the  Mind,  a 
Temple  and  Seminary  and  Prophetic  Mount,  whereto 
all  kindreds  of  the  Earth  will  pilgrim. — Fool  !  why 
journeyest  thou  wearisomely,  in  thy  antiquarian  fervor, 
to  gaze  on  the  stone  pyramids  of  Geeza,  or  the  clay 
ones  of  Sacchara  ?  These  stand  there,  as  I  can  tell  thee, 
idle  and  inert,  looking  over  the  Desert,  foolishly 
enough,  for  the  last  three-thousand  years  :  but  canst 
thou  not  open  thy  Hebrew  BIBLE,  then,  or  even  Luther's 
Version  thereof? " 

No  less  satisfactory  is  his  sudden  appearance  not 
in  Battle,  yet,  on  some  Battle-field  ;  which,  we  soon 
gather,  must  be  that  of  Wagram ;  so  that  here,  for 
once,  is  a  certain  approximation  to  distinctness  of 
date.  Omitting  much,  let  us  impart  what  follows  : 

"Horrible  enough!  A  whole  Marchfeld  strewed 
with  shell-splinters,  cannon  shot,  ruined  tumbrils,  and 


172  SAKTOR  RESARTUS. 

dead  men  and  horses  ;  stragglers  still  remaining  not 
so  much  as  buried.  And  those  red  mould  heaps  :  ay, 
there  lie  the  Shells  of  Men,  out  of  which  all  the  Life 
and  Virtue  has  been  blown  ;  and  now  are  they  swept 
together,  and  crammed-down  out  of  sight,  like  blown 
Egg-shells  ! — Did  Nature,  when  she  bade  the  Donau 
bring  down  his  mould-cargoes  from  the  Carinthian  and 
Carpathian  Heights,  and  spread  them  out  here  into  the 
softest,  richest  level, — intend  thee,  O  Marchfeld,  for  a 
corn-bearing  Nursery,  whereon  her  children  might  be 
nursed  ;  or  for  a  Cockpit,  wherein  they  might  the  more 
commodiously  be  throttled  and  tattered  ?  Were  thy 
three  broad  Highways,  meeting  here  from  the  ends  of 
Europe,  made  for  Ammunition-wagons,  then  ?  Were 
thy  Wagrams  and  Stillfrieds  but  so  many  ready-built 
Casemates,  wherein  the  house  of  Hapsburg  might 
batter  with  artillery,  and  with  artillery  be  battered  ? 
Konig  Ottokar,  amid  yonder  hillocks,  dies  under  Rodolfs 
truncheon  ;  here  Kaiser  Franz  falls  a-swoon  under  Napo- 
leon's :  within  which  five  centuries,  to  omit  the  others, 
how  has  thy  breast  fair  Plain,  been  defaced  and  defiled  ! 
The  green-sward  is  torn-up  and  trampled-down  ;  man's 
fond  care  of  it,  his  fruit-trees,  hedge-rows,  and  pleasant 
dwellings,  blown-away  with  gunpowder  ;  and  the  kind 
seedfield  lies  a  desolate,  hideous  Place  of  Skulls. — 
Nevertheless,  Nature  is  at  work ;  neither  shall  these 
Powder-Devilkins  with  their  utmost  devilry  gainsay 
her  :  but  all  that  gore  and  carnage  will  be  shrouded-in, 
absorbed  into  manure ;  and  next  year  the  Marchfeld 
will  be  green,  nay  greener.  Thrifty  unwearied  Nature, 
ever  out  of  our  great  waste  educing  some  little  profit 
of  thy  own, — how  dost  thou,  from  the  very  carcass  of 
the  Killer,  bring  Life  for  the  Living  ! 

"What,  speaking  in  quite  unofficial  language,  is  the 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  173 

net-purport  and  upshot  of  war?  To  my  own  knowl- 
edge, for  example,  there  dwell  and  toil,  in  the  British 
village  of  Dumdrudge,  usually  some  five-hundred  souls. 
From  these,  by  certain  'Natural  Enemies'  of  the  French 
there  are  successfully  selected,  during  the  French  war, 
say  thirty  able-bodied  men  :  Dumdrudge,  at  her  own 
expense,  has  suckled  and  nursed  them  :  she  has,  not 
without  difficulty  and  sorrow,  fed  them  up  to  manhood, 
and  even  trained  them  to  crafts,  so  that  one  can  weave, 
another  build,  another  hammer,  and  the  weakest  can 
stand  under  thirty  stone  avoirdupois.  Nevertheless, 
amid  much  weeping  and  swearing,  they  are  selected ; 
all  dressed  in  red  ;  and  shipped  away,  at  the  public 
charges,  some  two-thousand  miles,  or  say  only  to  the 
south  of  Spain  ;  and  fed  there  till  wanted.  And  now 
to  that  same  spot,  in  the  south  of  Spain,  are  thirty 
similar  French  artisans,  from  a  French  Dumdrudge, 
in  like  manner  wending  :  till  at  length,  after  infinite 
effort,  the  two  parties  come  into  actual  juxtaposition  ; 
and  Thirty  stands  fronting  Thirty,  each  with  a  gun  in 
his  hand.  Straightway  the  word  '  Fire  !  '  is  given  : 
and  they  blow  the  souls  out  of  one  another  ;  and  in 
place  of  sixty  brisk  useful  craftsmen,  the  world  has 
sixty  dead  carcasses,  which  it  must  bury,  and  anew 
shed  tears  for.  Had  these  men  any  quarrel  ?  Busy 
as  the  Devil  is,  not  the  smallest !  They  lived  far 
enough  apart ;  were  the  entirest  strangers  ;  nay,  in  so 
wide  a  Universe,  there  was  even,  unconsciously,  by 
Commerce,  some  mutual  helpfulness  between  them. 
How  then  ?  Simpleton  !  their  Governors  had  fallen- 
out  ;  and,  instead  of  shooting  one  another,  had  the 
cunning  to  make  these  poor  blockheads  shoot. — Alas, 
so  is  it  in  Deutschland,  and  hitherto  in  all  other  lands ; 
still  as  of  old,  '  what  devilry  soever  Kings  do,  the  Greeks 


174  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

must  pay  the  piper !  ' — In  that  fiction  of  the  English 
Smollet,  it  is  true,  the  final  Cessation  of  War  is  perhaps 
prophetically  shadowed  forth  ;  where  the  two  Natural 
Enemies,  in  person,  take  each  a  Tobacco-pipe,  filled 
with  Brimstone  ;  light  the  same,  and  smoke  in  one  an- 
other's faces,  till  the  weaker  gives  in  :  but  from  such 
predicted  Peace-Era,  what  blood-filled  trenches,  and 
contentious  centuries,  may  still  divide  us  !  " 

Thus  can  the  Professor,  at  least  in  lucid  intervals, 
look  away  from  his  own  sorrows,  over  the  many- 
colored  world,  and  pertinently  enough  note  what  is 
passing  there.  We  may  remark,  indeed,  that  for  the 
matter  of  spiritual  culture,  if  for  nothing  else,  per- 
haps few  periods  of  his  life  were  richer  than  this. 
Internally,  there  is  the  most  momentous  instructive 
Course  of  Practical  Philosophy,  with  Experiments, 
going  on  ;  towards  the  right  comprehension  of  which 
his  Peripatetic  habits,  favorable  to  Meditation,  might 
help  him  rather  than  hinder.  Externally,  again,  as 
he  wanders  to  and  fro,  there  are,  if  for  the  longing 
heart  little  substance,  yet  for  the  seeing  eye  sights 
enough :  in  these  so  boundless  Travels  of  his,  grant- 
ing that  the  Satanic  School  was  even  partially  kept 
down,  what  an  incredible  knowledge  of  our  Planet, 
and  its  Inhabitants  and  their  Works,  that  is  to  say,  of 
all  knowable  things,  might  not  Teufelsdrockh  acquire  ! 

"I  have  read  in  most  Public  Libraries,"  says  he, 
"including  those  of  Constantinople  and  Samarcand  : 
in  most  Colleges,  except  the  Chinese  Mandarin  ones, 
I  have  studied,  or  seen  that  there  was  no  studying. 
Unknown  Languages  have  I  oftenest  gathered  from 
their  natural  repertory,  the  Air,  by  my  organ  of  Hear- 
jng  ;  Statistics,  Geographies,  Topographies  came, 
through  the  Eye,  almost  of  their  own  accord.  The 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  175 

ways  of  Man,  how  he  seeks  food,  and  warmth,  and 
Protection  for  himself,  in  most  regions,  are  ocularly 
known  to  me.  Like  the  great  Hadrian,  I  meted-out 
much  of  the  terraqueous  Globe  with  a  pair  of  Com- 
passes that  belonged  to  myself  only. 

"Of  great  Scenes  why  speak ?  Three  summer  days, 
I  lingered  reflecting,  and  even  composing  (dichtete),  by 
the  Pine-chasms  of  Vaucluse  ;  and  in  that  clear  Lakelet 
moistened  my  bread.  I  have  sat  under  the  Palm-trees 
of  Tadmor  ;  smoked  a  pipe  among  the  ruins  of  Babylon. 
The  great  Wall  of  China  I  have  seen  ;  and  can  testify 
that  it  is  of  gray  brick,  coped  and  covered  with  granite, 
and  only  shows  second-rate  masonry. — Great  events, 
also,  have  not  I  witnessed  ?  Kings  sweated-down 
(ausgemergelf)  into  Berlin-and-Milan  Customhouse-Offi- 
cers ;  the  World  well  won,  and  the  World  well  lost  ; 
oftener  than  once  a  hundred-thousand  individuals  shot 
(by  each  other)  in  one  day.  All  kindreds  and  peoples 
and  nations  dashed  together,  and  shifted  and  shovelled 
into  heaps  that  they  might  ferment  there,  and  in  time 
unite.  The  birth-pangs  of  Democracy,  wherewith 
convulsed  Europe  was  groaning  in  cries  that  reached 
Heaven,  could  not  escape  me. 

"For  great  Men  I  have  ever  had  the  warmest  pre- 
dilection ;  and  can  perhaps  boast  that  few  such  in  this 
era  have  wholly  escaped  me.  Great  Men  are  the  in- 
spired (speaking  and  acting)  Text  of  that  divine  BOOK 
OF  REVELATIONS,  whereof  a  Chapter  is  completed  from 
epoch  to  epoch,  and  by  some  named  HISTORY  ;  to 
which  inspired  Texts  your  numerous  talented  men,  and 
your  innumerable  untalented  men,  are  the  better  or 
worse  exegetic  Commentaries,  and  wagonload  of  too- 
stupid,  heretical  or  orthodox,  weekly  Sermons.  For 
my  study,  the  inspired  Texts  themselves  !  Thus  did  not 


176  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

I,  in  very  early  days,  having  disguised  me  as  tavern- 
waiter,  stand  behind  the  field-chairs,  under  that  shady 
Tree  at  Treisnitz  by  the  Jena  Highway  ;  waiting  upon 
the  great  Schiller  and  greater  Goethe  ;  and  hearing  what 

I  have  not  forgotten.     For " 

But  at  this  point  the  Editor  recalls  his  principle 

of  caution,  some  time  ago  laid  down,  and  must  suppress 
much.  Let  not  the  sacredness  of  Laurelled,  still  more, 
of  Crowned  Heads,  be  tampered  with.  Should  we,  at 
a  future  day,  find  circumstances  altered,  and  the  time 
come  for  Publication,  then  may  these  glimpses  into  the 
privacy  of  the  Illustrious  be  conceded  ;  which  for  the 
present  were  little  better  than  treacherous,  perhaps 
traitorous  Eavesdroppings.  Of  Lord  Byron,  therefore, 
of  Pope  Pius,  Emperor  Tarakwang,  and  the  "White 
Water-roses"  (Chinese  Carbonari),  with  their  mysteries, 
no  notice  here  !  Of  Napoleon  himself  we  shall  only, 
glancing  from  afar,  remark  that  Teufelsdrockh's  rela- 
tion to  him  seems  to  have  been  of  very  varied  charac- 
ter. At  first  we  find  our  poor  Professor  on  the  point  of 
being  shot  as  a  spy  ;  then  taken  into  private  conversa- 
tion, even  pinched  on  the  ear,  yet  presented  with  no 
money  ;  at  last  indignantly  dismissed,  almost  thrown 
out  of  doors,  as  an  "  Ideologist."  "He  himself,"  says 
the  Professor,  "was  among  the  completest  Ideologists, 
at  least  Ideopraxists  :  in  the  Idea  (in  der  Idee]  he  lived, 
moved  and  fought.  The  man  was  a  Divine  Missionary, 
though  unconscious  of  it ;  and  preached,  through  the 
cannon's  throat,  that  great  doctrine,  La  carriere  ouverte 
aux  ialens  (The  Tools  to  him  that  can  handle  them), 
which  is  our  ultimate  Political  Evangel,  wherein  alone 
can  liberty  lie.  Madly  enough  he  preached,  it  is  true, 
as  Enthusiasts  and  first  Missionaries  are  wont,  with 
imperfect  utterance,  amid  much  frothy  rant ;  yet  as 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  177 

articulately  perhaps  as  the  case  admitted.  Or  call  him, 
if  you  will,  an  American  Backwoodsman,  who  had  to 
fell  unpenetrated  forests,  and  battle  with  innumerable 
wolves,  and  did  not  entirely  forbear  strong-  liquor,  riot- 
ing, and  even  theft ;  whom,  notwithstanding,  the  peace- 
ful Sower  will  follow,  and,  as  he  cuts  the  boundless 
harvest,  bless." 

More  legitimate  and  decisively  authentic  is  Teufels- 
drockh's  appearance  and  emergence  (we  know  not  well 
whence)  in  the  solitude  of  the  North  Cape  on  that  June 
Midnight.  He  has  a  "light-blue  Spanish  cloak" 
hanging  round  him,  as  his  "most  commodious  prin- 
cipal, indeed  sole  upper-garment ;  "  and  stands  there,  on 
the  World-promontory,  looking  over  the  infinite  Brine, 
like  a  little  blue  Belfry  (as  we  figure),  now  motionless 
indeed,  yet  ready,  if  stirred,  to  ring  quaintest  changes. 

"Silence  as  of  death,"  writes  he;  "  for  Midnight, 
even  in  the  Arctic  latitudes,  has  its  character  :  nothing 
but  the  granite  cliffs  ruddy-tinged,  the  peaceable  gurgle 
of  that  slow-heaving  Polar  Ocean,  over  which  in  the 
utmost  North  the  great  Sun  hangs  low  and  lazy,  as  if  he 
too  were  slumbering.  Yet  is  his  cloud-couch  wrought 
of  crimson  and  cloth-of-gold  ;  yet  does  his  light  stream 
over  the  mirror  of  waters,  like  a  tremulous  fire-pillar, 
shooting  downwards  to  the  abyss,  and  hide  itself  under 
my  feet.  In  such  moments,  Solitude  also  is  invaluable  ; 
for  who  would  speak,  or  be  looked  on,  when  behind 
him  lies  all  Europe  and  Africa,  fast  asleep,  except  the 
watchmen  ;  and  before  him  the  silent  Immensity,  and 
Palace  of  the  Eternal,  whereof  our  Sun  is  but  a  porch- 
lamp? 

"  Nevertheless,  in  this  solemn  moment  comes  a  man, 
or  monster,  scrambling  from  among  the  rock-hollows  ; 
and,  shaggy,  huge  as  the  Hyperborean  Bear,  hails  me 

12 


1 78  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

in  Russian  speech  :  most  probably,  therefore,  a  Russian 
Smuggler.  With  courteous  brevity,  I  signify  my  indiffer- 
ence to  contraband  trade,  my  humane  intentions,  yet 
strong  wish  to  be  private.  In  vain  :  the  monster, 
counting  doubtless  on  his  superior  stature,  and  minded 
to  make  sport  for  himself,  or  perhaps  profit,  were  it 
with  murder,  continues  to  advance  ;  ever  assailing  me 
with  his  importunate  train-oil  breath  ;  and  now  has 
advanced,  till  we  stand  both  on  the  verge  of  the  rock, 
the  deep  Sea  rippling  greedily  down  below.  What 
argument  will  avail  ?  On  the  thick  Hyperborean,  cher- 
ubic reasoning,  seraphic  eloquence  were  lost.  Prepared 
for  such  extremity,  I,  deftly  enough,  whisk  aside  one 
step  ;  draw  out,  from  my  interior  reservoirs,  a  sufficient 
Birmingham  Horse-pistol,  and  say,  '  Be  so  obliging  as 
retire,  Friend  (Erziehe  sich  zuruck,  Freund),  and  with 
promptitude  !  '  This  logic  even  the  Hyperborean  un- 
derstands :  fast  enough,  with  apologetic,  petitionary 
growl,  he  sidles  off;  and,  except  for  suicidal  as  well  as 
homicidal  purposes,  need  not  return. 

"  Such  I  hold  to  be  the  genuine  use  of  Gunpowder: 
that  it  makes  all  men  alike  tall.  Nay,  ifthou  be  cooler, 
cleverer  than  I,  if  thou  have  more  Mind,  though  all 
but  no  Body  whatever,  then  canst  thou  kill  me  first,  and 
art  the  taller.  Hereby,  at  last,  is  the  Goliath  powerless, 
and  the  David  resistless  ;  savage  Animalism  is  nothing, 
inventive  Spiritualism  is  all. 

"With  respect  to  Duels,  indeed,  I  have  my  own 
ideas.  Few  things,  in  this  so  surprising  world,  strike 
me  with  more  surprise.  Two  little  visual  Spectra  of 
men,  hovering  with  insecure  enough  cohesion  in  the 
midst  of  the  UNFATHOMABLE,  and  to  dissolve  therein,  at 
any  rate,  very  soon, — make  pause  at  the  distance  of 
twelve  paces  asunder ;  whirl  round ;  and,  simuUane- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


179 


ously  by  the  cunningest  mechanism,  explode  one 
another  into  Dissolution  ;  and  off-hand  become  Air, 
and  Non-extant !  Deuce  on  it  (verdammf),  the  little 
spitfires  ! — Nay,  I  think  with  old  Hugo  von  Trim- 
berg  :  'God  must  needs  laugh  outright,  could  such  a 
thing  be,  to  see  his  wondrous  Manikins  here  below.'  " 

But  amid  these  specialties,  let  us  not  forget  the  great 
generality,  which  is  our  chief  quest  here  :  How  pros- 
pered the  inner  man  of  Teufelsdrockh  under  so  much 
outward  shifting  ?  Does  Legion  still  lurk  in  him,  though 
repressed;  or  has  he  exorcised  that  Devil's  Brood? 
We  can  answer  that  the  symptoms  continue  promising. 
Experience  is  the  grand  spiritual  Doctor ;  and  with  him 
Teufelsdrockh  has  now  been  long  a  patient,  swallow- 
ing many  a  bitter  bolus.  Unless  our  poor  Friend 
belong  to  the  numerous  class  of  Incurables,  which 
seems  not  likely,  some  cure  will  doubtless  be  effected. 
We  should  rather  say  that  Legion,  or  the  Satanic  School, 
was  now  pretty  well  extirpated  and  cast  out,  but  next 
to  nothing  introduced  in  its  room  ;  whereby  the  heart 
remains,  for  the  while,  in  a  quiet  but  no  comfortable 
state. 

"At  length,  after  so  much  roasting,"  thus  writes  our 
Autobiographer,  "  I  was  what  you  might  name  cal- 
cined. Pray  only  that  it  be  not  rather,  as  is  the  more 
frequent  issue,  reduced  to  a  caput-mortuum !  But  in 
any  case,  by  mere  dint  of  practice,  I  had  grown  familiar 
with  many  things.  Wretchedness  was  still  wretched ; 
but  I  could  now  partly  see  through  it,  and  despise  it. 
Which  highest  mortal,  in  this  inane  Existence,  had  I 
not  found  a  Shadow-hunter,  or  Shadow-hunted ;  and, 
when  I  looked  through  his  brave  garnitures,  miserable 
enough?  Thy  wishes  have  all  been  sniffed  aside, 


l8o  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

thought  I :  but  what,  had  they  even  been  all  granted  ! 
Did  not  the  Boy  Alexander  weep  because  he  had  not 
two  Planets  to  conquer  ;  or  a  whole  Solar  System  ;  or 
after  that,  a  whole  Universe?  Ach  Gott,  when  I  gazed 
into  these  Stars,  have  they  not  looked-down  on  me  as 
if  with  pity,  from  their  serene  spaces  ;  like  Eyes  glisten- 
ing with  heavenly  tears  over  the  little  lot  of  man  ! 
Thousands  of  human  generations,  all  as  noisy  as  our 
own,  have  been  swallowed-up  of  Time,  and  there 
remains  no  wreck  of  them  any  more ;  and  Arcturus 
and  Orion  and  Sirius  and  the  Pleiades  are  still  shining 
in  their  courses,  clear  and  young,  as  when  the  Shepherd 
first  noted  them  in  the  plain  of  Shinar.  Pshaw  !  what 
is  this  paltry  little  Dog-cage  of  an  Earth ;  what  art 
thou  that  sittest  whining  there  ?  Thou  art  still  Noth- 
ing, Nobody  ?  true ;  but  who,  then,  is  Something, 
Somebody  ?  For  thee  the  Family  of  Man  has  no  use  ; 
it  rejects  thee  ;  thou  art  wholly  as  a  dissevered  limb  : 
so  be  it ;  perhaps  it  is  better  so  !  " 

Too-heavy-laden  Teufelsdrockh  !  Yet  surely  his 
bands  are  loosening  ;  one  day  he  will  hurl  the  burden 
far  from  him,  and  bound  forth  free  and  with  a  second 
youth. 

"This,"  says  our  Professor,  "was  the  CENTRE  OF 
INDIFFERENCE  I  had  now  reached ;  through  which  whoso 
travels  from  the  Negative  Pole  to  the  Positive  must 
necessarily  pass." 


SA&TO&  &ESAATU&  1 8 1 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  EVERLASTING  YEA. 

"  TEMPTATIONS  in  the  Wilderness  !  "  exclaims  Teufels- 
drockh  :  "Have  we  not  all  to  be  tried  with  such? 
Not  so  easily  can  the  old  Adam,  lodged  in  us  by  birth, 
be  dispossessed.  Our  Life  is  compassed  round  with 
Necessity  ;  yet  is  the  meaning  of  Life  itself  no  other  than 
Freedom,  than  Voluntary  Force  :  thus  have  we  a  war- 
fare ;  in  the  beginning,  especially,  a  hard-fought  battle. 
For  the  God-given  mandate,  Work  ihou  in  Welldoing, 
lies  mysteriously  written,  in  Promethean  Prophetic 
Characters,  in  our  hearts  ;  and  leaves  us  no  rest,  night 
or  day,  till  it  be  deciphered  and  obeyed  ;  till  it  burn 
forth,  in  our  conduct,  a  visible,  acted  Gospel  of  Free- 
dom. And  as  the  clay-given  mandate,  Eat  Ihou  and 
be  filled,  at  the  same  time  persuasively  proclaims  itself 
through  every  nerve, — must  not  there  be  a  confusion, 
a  contest,  before  the  better  Influence  can  become  the 
upper  ? 

"  To  me  nothing  seems  more  natural  than  that  the 
Son  of  Man,  when  such  God-given  mandate  first  pro- 
phetically stirs  within  him,  and  the  Clay  must  now  be 
vanquished  or  vanquish, — should  be  carried  of  the 
spirit  into  grim  Solitudes,  and  there  fronting  the  Temp- 
ter do  grimmest  battle  with  him ;  defiantly  setting  him 
at  naught,  till  he  yield  and  fly.  Name  it  as  we  choose  : 


!g2  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

with  or  without  visible  Devil,  whether  in  the  natural 
Desert  of  rocks  and  sands,  or  in  the  populous  moral 
Desert  of  selfishness  and  baseness, — to  such  Tempta- 
tion are  we  all  called.  Unhappy  if  we  are  not !  Un- 
happy if  we  are  but  Half-men,  in  whom  that  divine 
handwriting  has  never  blazed  forth,  all-subduing,  in 
true  sun-splendor;  but  quivers  dubiously  amid  meaner 
lights  :  or  smoulders,  in  dull  pain,  in  darkness,  under 
earthly  vapors  ! — Our  Wilderness  is  the  wide  World  in 
an  Atheistic  Century  ;  our  Forty  Days  are  long  years 
of  suffering  and  fasting  :  nevertheless,  to  these  also 
comes  an  end.  Yes,  to  me  also  was  given,  if  not 
Victory,  yet  the  consciousness  of  Battle,  andthe  resolve 
to  persevere  therein  while  life  or  faculty  is  left.  To 
me  also,  entangled  in  the  enchanting  forests,  demon- 
peopled,  doleful  of  sight  and  of  sound,  it  was  given, 
after  weariest  wanderings,  to  work  out  my  way  into 
the  higher  sunlit  slopes — of  that  Mountain  which  has 
no  summit,  or  whose  summit  is  in  Heaven  only  !  " 

He  says  elsewhere,  under  a  less  ambitious  figure ; 
as  figures  are,  once  for  all,  natural  to  him  :  "  Has  not 
thy  Life  been  that  of  most  sufficient  men  (tuchtigen 
Manner)  thou  hast  known  in  this  generation  ?  An 
outflush  of  foolish  young  Enthusiasm,  like  the  first 
fallow-crop,  wherein  are  as  many  weeds  as  valuable 
herbs  :  this  all  parched  away,  under  the  Droughts  of 
practical  and  spiritual  Unbelief,  as  Disappointment, 
in  thought  and  act,  often-repeated  gave  rise  to  Doubt, 
and  Doubt  gradually  settled  into  Denial  !  If  I  have 
had  a  second-crop,  and  now  see  the  perennial  green- 
sward, and  sit  under  umbrageous  cedars,  which  defy 
all  Drought  (and  Doubt) ;  herein  too,  be  the  Heavens 
praised,  I  am  not  without  examples,  and  even  exem- 
plars." 


SARTOR  RRSARTl'S.  ^3 

So  that,  for  Teufelsdrockh  also,  there  has  been  a 
"glorious  revolution:"  these  mad  shadow-hunting 
and  shadow-hunted  Pilgrimings  of  his  were  but  some 
purifying  "Temptation  in  the  Wilderness,"  before  his 
apostolic  work  (such  as  it  was)  could  begin  ;  which 
Temptation  is  now  happily  over,  and  the  Devil  once 
more  worsted  !  Was  ' '  that  high  moment  in  the  Rue 
de  f  Enfer"  then,  properly  the  turning-point  of  the 
battle  ;  when  the  Fiend  said,  Worship  me  or  be  torn  in 
shreds  ;  and  was  answered  valiantly  with  an  Apage 
Satana  ? — Singular  Teufelsdrockh,  would  thou  hadst 
told  thy  singular  story  in  plain  words  !  But  it  is  fruit- 
less to  look  there,  in  those  Paper-bags,  for  such.  Noth- 
ing but  innuendoes,  figurative  crotchets  :  a  typical 
Shadow,  fitfully  wavering,  prophetico-satiric  ;  no  clear 
logical  Picture.  "  How  paint  to  the  sensual  eye,"  asks 
he  once,  "what  passes  in  the  Holy-of-Holies  of  Man's 
Soul ;  in  what  words,  known  to  these  profane  times, 
speak  even  afar-off  of  the  unspeakable?  We  ask  in 
turn  :  Why  perplex  these  times,  profane  as  they  are, 
with  needless  obscurity  by  omission  and  by  commis- 
sion ?  Not  mystical  only  is  our  Professor,  but  whimsi- 
cal ;  and  involves  himself,  now  more  than  ever,  in 
eye-bewildering  chiaroscuro.  Successive  glimpses, 
here  faithfully  imparted,  our  more  gifted  readers  must 
endeavor  to  combine  for  their  own  behoof. 

He  says:  "The  hot  Harmattan  wind  had  raged 
itself  out ;  its  howl  went  silent  within  me  ;  and  the 
long-deafened  soul  could  now  hear.  I  paused  in  my 
wild  wanderings  ;  and  sat  me  down  to  wait,  and  con- 
sider ;  for  it  was  as  if  the  hour  of  change  drew  nigh. 
I  seemed  to  surrender,  to  renounce  utterly,  and  say  : 
Fly,  then,  false  shadows  of  Hope  ;  I  will  chase  you  no 
more,  I  will  believe  you  no  more.  And  ye  too,  hag- 


184  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

gard  spectres  of  Fear,  I  care  not  for  you ;  ye  too  are 
all  shadows  and  a  lie.  Let  me  rest  here  :  for  I  am 
way-weary  and  life-weary  ;  I  will  rest  here,  were  it  but 
to  die  :  to  die  or  to  live  is  alike  to  me ;  alike  insignifi- 
cant."— And  again:  "Here,  then,  as  I  lay  in  that 
CENTRE  OF  INDIFFERENCE  ;  cast,  doubtless  by  benignant 
upper  Influence,  into  a  healing  sleep,  the  heavy  dreams 
rolled  gradually  away,  and  I  woke  to  a  new  Heaven 
and  a  new  Earth.  The  first  preliminary  moral  Act, 
Annihilation  of  Self  (Selbst-todtung),  had  been  happily 
accomplished  ;  and  my  mind's  eyes  were  now  unsealed, 
and  its  hands  ungyved." 

Might  we  not  also  conjecture  that  the  following 
passage  refers  to  his  Locality,  during  this  same  ' '  heal- 
ing sleep  ; "  that  his  Pilgrim-staff  lies  cast  aside  here, 
on  "the  high  table-land  ;  "  and  indeed  that  the  repose 
is  already  taking  wholesome  effect  on  him  ?  If  it  were 
not  that  the  tone,  in  some  parts,  has  more  of  riancy, 
even  of  levity,  than  we  could  have  expected  !  How- 
ever, in  Teufelsdrockh,  there  is  always  the  strangest 
Dualism  :  light  dancing,  with  guitar-music,  will  be 
going  on  in  the  fore-court,  while  by  fits  from  within 
comes  the  faint  whimpering  of  woe  and  wail.  We 
transcribe  the  piece  entire. 

"  Beautiful  it  was  to  sit  there,  as  in  my  skyey  Tent, 
musing  and  meditating  ;  on  the  high  table-land,  in  front 
of  the  Mountains ;  over  me,  as  roof,  the  azure  Dome, 
and  around  me,  for  walls,  four  azure-flowing  curtains, 
— namely,  of  the  Four  azure  Winds,  on  whose  bottom- 
fringes  also  I  have  seen  gilding.  And  then  to  fancy 
the  fair  Castles  that  stood  sheltered  in  these  Mountain 
hollows ;  with  their  green  flower-lawns,  and  white 
dames  and  damosels,  lovely  enough  :  or  better  still, 
the  straw-roofed  Cottages,  wherein  stood  many  a 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  185 

Mother  baking  bread,  with  her  children  round  her  : — 
all  hidden  and  protectingly  folded-up  in  the  valley-folds  ; 
yet  there  and  alive,  as  sure  as  if  I  beheld  them.  Or  to 
see,  as  well  as  fancy,  the  nine  Towns  and  Villages,  that 
lay  round  my  mountain -seat,  which,  in  still  weather, 
were  wont  to  speak  to  me  (by  their  steeple-bells)  with 
metal  tongue  ;  and,  in  almost  all  weather,  proclaimed 
their  vitality  by  repeated  Smoke-clouds  ;  whereon,  as 
on  a  culinary  horologe,  I  might  read  the  hour  of  the  day. 
For  it  was  the  smoke  of  cookery,  as  kind  housewives 
at  morning,  midday,  eventide,  were  boiling  their  hus- 
bands' kettles  ;  and  ever  a  blue  pillar  rose  up  into  the 
air,  successively  or  simultaneously,  from  each  of  the 
nine,  saying,  as  plainly  as  smoke  could  say :  Such  and 
such  a  meal  is  getting  ready  here.  Not  uninteresting  ! 
For  you  have  the  whole  Borough,  with  all  its  love- 
makings  and  scandal-mongeries,  contentions  and  con- 
tentments, as  in  miniature,  and  could  cover  it  all  with 
your  hat. — If,  in  my  wide  Wayfarings,  I  had  learned  to 
look  into  the  business  of  the  World  in  its  details,  here 
perhaps  was  the  place  for  combining  it  into  general 
propositions,  and  deducing  inferences  therefrom. 

"Often  also  could  I  see  the  black  Tempest  marching 
in  anger  through  the  Distance  :  round  some  Schreck- 
horn,  as  yet  grim-blue,  would  the  eddying  vapor  gather, 
and  there  tumultuously  eddy,  and  flow  down  like  a 
mad  witch's  hair  ;  till,  after  a  space,  it  vanished,  and, 
in  the  clear  sunbeam,  your  Schreckhorn  stood  smiling 
grim-white,  for  the  vapor  had  held  snow.  How  thou 
fermentest  and  elaboratest,  in  thy  great  fermenting-vat 
and  laboratory  of  an  Atmosphere,  of  a  World,  O  Nature  ! 
— Or  what  is  Nature?  Ha  !  why  do  I  not  name  thee 
GOD  ?  Art  not  thou  the  '  Living  Garment  of  God  '  ?  O 
Heavens,  is  it,  in  very  deed,  HE,  then,  that  ever  speaks 


1 86  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

through  thee  ;  that  lives   and  loves  in  thee,  that  lives 
and  loves  in  me? 

"  Fore-shadows,  call  them  rather  fore-splendors,  of 
that  Truth,  and  Beginning  of  Truths,  fell  mysteriously 
over  my  soul.  Sweeter  than  Dayspring  to  the  Ship- 
wrecked in  Nova  Zembla  ;  ah,  like  the  mother's  voice 
to  her  little  child  that  strays  bewildered,  weeping,  in 
unknown  tumults ;  like  soft  streamings  of  celestial 
music  to  my  too-exasperated  heart,  came  that  Evangel. 
The  Universe  is  not  dead  and  demoniacal,  a  charnel- 
house  with  spectres ;  but  god-like,  and  my  Father's  ! 

"With  other  eyes,  too,  could  I  now  look  upon  my 
fellow-man  :  with  an  infinite  Love,  an  infinite  Pity- 
Poor,  wandering,  wayward  man  !  Art  thou  not  tried, 
and  beaten  with  stripes,  even  as  I  am  ?  Ever,  whether 
thou  bear  the  royal  mantle  or  the  beggar's  gabardine, 
art  thou  not  so  weary,  so  heavy-laden  ;  and  thy  Bed 
of  Rest  is  but  a  Grave.  O  my  Brother,  my  Brother, 
why  cannot  I  shelter  thee  in  my  bosom,  and  wipe  away 
all  tears  from  thine  eyes  ! — truly,  the  din  of  many- 
voiced  Life,  which,  in  this  solitude,  with  the  mind's 
organ,  I  could  hear,  was  no  longer  a  maddening  dis- 
cord, but  a  melting  one  ;  like  inarticulate  cries,  and 
sobbings  of  a  dumb  creature,  which  in  the  ear  of 
Heaven  are  prayers.  The  poor  Earth,  with  her  poor 
joys,  was  now  my  needy  Mother,  not  my  cruel  Step- 
dame  ;  Man,  with  his  so  mad  Wants  and  so  mean  En- 
deavors, had  become  the  dearer  to  me  ;  and  even  for  his 
sufferings  and  his  sins,  I  now  first  named  him  Brother. 
Thus  was  I  standing  in  the  porch  of  that  '  Sanctuary  of 
Sorrow  ; '  by  strange,  steep  ways  had  I  too  been  guided 
thither ;  and  ere  long  its  sacred  gates  would  open,  and 
the  '  Divine  Depth  of  Sorrow '  lie  disclosed  to  me. " 

The  Professor  says,  he  here  first  got  eye  on  the  Knot 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  187 

that  had  been  strangling  him,  and  straightway  could 
unfasten  it,  and  was  free.  "A  vain  interminable  con- 
troversy," writes  he,  "touching  what  is  at  present 
called  Origin  of  Evil,  or  some  such  thing,  arises  in  every 
soul,  since  the  beginning  of  the  world  ;  and  in  every 
soul,  that  would  pass  from  idle  Suffering  into  actual 
Endeavoring,  must  first  be  put  an  end  to.  The  most, 
in  our  time,  have  to  go  content  with  a  simple,  incom- 
plete enough  Suppression  of  this  controversy ;  to  a  few 
some  Solution  of  it  is  indispensable.  In  every  new  era, 
too,  such  Solution  comes-out  in  different  terms  ;  and 
ever  the  Solution  of  the  last  era  has  become  obsolete, 
and  is  found  unserviceable.  For  it  is  man's  nature 
to  change  his  Dialect  from  century  to  century  ;  he  can- 
not help  it  though  he  would.  The  authentic  Church- 
Catechism  of  our  present  century  has  not  yet  fallen  into 
my  hands  :  meanwhile,  for  my  own  private  behoof,  I 
attempt  to  elucidate  the  matter  so.  Man's  Unhap- 
piness,  as  I  construe,  comes  of  his  Greatness  ;  it  is 
because  there  is  an  Infinite  in  him,  which  with  all  his 
cunning  he  cannot  quite  bury  under  the  Finite.  Will 
the  whole  Finance  Ministers  and  Upholsterers  and 
Confectioners  of  modern  Europe  undertake,  in  joint- 
stock  company,  to  make  one  Shoeblack  HAPPY?  They 
cannot  accomplish  it,  above  an  hour  or  two  :  for  the 
Shoeblack  also  has  a  Soul  quite  other  than  his  Stomach  ; 
and  would  require,  if  you  consider  it,  for  his  permanent 
satisfaction  and  saturation,  simply  this  allotment,  no 
more,  and  no  less  ;  God's  infinite  Universe  altogether  to 
himself,  therein  to  enjoy  infinitely,  and  fill  every  wish 
as  fast  as  it  rose.  Oceans  of  Hochheimer,  a  Throat 
like  that  of  Ophiuchus  :  speak  not  of  them  ;  to  the  in- 
finite Shoeblack  they  are  as  nothing.  No  sooner  is 
your  ocean  filled,  than  he  grumbles  that  it  might  have 


i88  SARTOX  RESARTUS. 

been  of  better  vintage.  Try  him  with  half  of  a  Universe, 
of  an  Omnipotence,  he  sets  to  quarreling  with  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  other  half,  and  declares  himself  the  most 
maltreated  of  men. — Always  there  is  a  black  spot  in 
our  sunshine  :  it  is  even,  as  I  said,  the  Shadow  of  Our- 
selves. 

"But  the  whim  we  have  of  Happiness  is  somewhat 
thus.  By  certain  valuations,  and  averages,  of  our  own 
striking,  we  come  upon  some  sort  of  average  terrestrial 
lot ;  this  we  fancy  belongs  to  us  by  nature,  and  of  in- 
defeasible right.  It  is  simple  payment  of  our  wages, 
of  our  deserts  ;  requires  neither  thanks  nor  complaint ; 
only  such  overplus  as  there  may  be  do  we  account  Hap- 
piness ;  any  deficit  again  is  Misery.  Now  consider 
that  we  have  the  valuation  of  our  own  deserts  ourselves, 
and  what  a  fund  of  Self-conceit  there  is  in  each  of  us, 
— do  you  wonder  that  the  balance  should  so  often  dip 
the  wrong  way,  and  many  a  Blockhead  cry  :  See  there, 
what  a  payment ;  was  ever  worthy  gentleman  so  used  ! 
— I  tell  thee,  Blockhead,  it  all  comes  of  thy  Vanity  ;  of 
what  thou  fanciest  those  same  deserts  of  thine  to  be. 
Fancy  that  thou  deservest  to  be  hanged  (as  is  most 
likely),  thou  wilt  feel  it  happiness  to  be  only  shot : 
fancy  that  thou  deservest  to  be  hanged  in  a  hair-halter, 
it  will  be  a  luxury  to  die  in  hemp. 

"  So  true  is  it,  what  I  then  said,  that  the  Fraction  of 
Life  can  be  increased  in  value  not  so  much  by  increasing 
your  Numerator  as  by  lessening  your  Denominator.  Nay, 
unless' my  Algebra  deceive  me,  Unity  itself  divided  by 
Zero  will  give  Infinity.  Make  thy  claim  of  wages  a  zero, 
then  ;  thou  hast  the  world  under  thy  feet.  Well  did 
the  Wisest  of  our  time  write  :  '  It  is  only  with  Renun- 
ciation (Entsagen)  that  Life,  properly  speaking,  can  be 
said  to  begin.' 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  189 

"  I  asked  myself :  What  is  this  that,  ever  since  earliest 
years,  them  hast  been  fretting  and  fuming,  and  lament- 
ing and  self-tormenting,  on  account  of?  Say  it  in  a 
word  :  is  it  not  because  thou  art  not  HAPPY?  Because 
the  THOU  (sweet  gentleman)  is  not  sufficiently  honored, 
nourished,  soft-bedded,  and  lovingly  cared-for  ?  Fool- 
ish soul  !  What  Act  of  Legislature  was  there  that  thou 
shouldst  be  Happy?  A  little  while  ago  thou  hadst  no 
right  to  be  at  all.  What  if  thou  wert  born  and  predes- 
tined not  to  be  happy,  but  to  be  Unhappy  !  Art  thou 
nothing  other  than  a  Vulture,  then,  that  fliest  through 
the  Universe  seeking  after  somewhat  to  eat ;  and  shriek- 
ing dolefully  because  carrion  enough  is  not  given  thee? 
Close  thy  By ron  ;  open  thy  Goethe." 

"  Es  leuchtet  mir  em,  I  see  a  glimpse  of  it !  "  cries  he 
elsewhere:  "there  is  in  man  a  HIGHER  than  Love  of 
Happiness  :  he  can  do  without  Happiness,  and  instead 
thereof  find  Blessedness  !  Was  it  not  to  preach- forth  this 
same  HIGHER  that  sages  and  martyrs,  the  Poet  and  the 
Priest,  in  all  times,  have  spoken  and  suffered  ;  bearing 
testimony,,  through  life  and  through  death,  of  the  God- 
like that  is  in  Man,  and  how  in  the  Godlike  only  has  he 
Strength  and  Freedom  ?  Which  God-inspired  Poctrine 
art  thou  also  honored  to  be  taught ;  O  Heavens  !  and 
broken  with  manifold  merciful  Afflictions,  even  till  thou 
become  contrite,  and  learn  it !  O,  thank  thy  Destiny 
for  these  ;  thankfully  bear  what  yet  remain  :  thou  hadst 
need  of  them  ;  the  Self  in  thee  needed  to  be  annihilated. 
By  benignant  fever-paroxysms  is  Life  rooting  out  the 
deep-seated  chronic  Disease,  and  triumphs  over  Death. 
On  the  roaring  billows  of  Time,  thou  art  not  ingulfed, 
but  borne  aloft  into  the  azure  of  Eternity.  Love  not 
Pleasure;  love  God.  This  is  the  EVERLASTING  YEA; 
wherein  all  contradiction  is  solved  :  wherein  whoso 
walks  and  works,  it  is  well  with  him," 


190 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


And  again  :  "Small  is  it  that  thou  canst  trample  the 
Earth  with  its  injuries  under  thy  feet,  as  old  Greek 
Zeno  trained  thee  :  thou  canst  love  the  Earth  while  it 
injures  thee,  and  even  because  it  injures  thee  ;  for  this 
a  Greater  than  Zeno  was  needed,  and  he  too  was  sent 
Knowest  thou  that  '  Worship  of  Sorrow '  f  The  Temple 
thereof,  founded  some  eighteen  centuries  ago,  now 
lies  in  ruins,  overgrown  with  jungle,  the  habitation  of 
doleful  creatures  :  nevertheless,  venture  forward  ;  in  a 
low  crypt,  arched  out  of  falling  fragments,  thou  findest 
the  Altar  still  there,  and  its  sacred  Lamp  perennially 
burning." 

Without  pretending  to  comment  on  which  strange 
utterances,  the  Editor  will  only  remark,  that  there  lies 
beside  them  much  of  a  still  more  questionable  character  ; 
unsuited  to  the  general  apprehension  ;  nay  wherein  he 
himself  does  not  see  his  way.  Nebulous  disquisitions 
on  Religion,  yet  not  without  bursts  of  splendor  ;  on  the 
"  perennial  continuance  of  Inspiration  ;  "  on  Prophecy  ; 
that  there  are  "  true  Priests,  as  well  as  Baal-Priests,  in 
our  own  day  :  "  with  more  of  the  like  sort.  We  select 
some  fractions,  by  way  of  finish  to  this  farrago. 

"  Cease,  my  much-respected  Herr  von  Voltaire, "  thus 
apostrophizes  the  Professor:  "shut  thy  sweet  voice; 
for  the  task  appointed  thee  seems  finished.  Sufficiently 
hast  thou  demonstrated  this  proposition,  considerable 
or  otherwise  :  That  the  My  thus  of  the  Christian  Religion 
looks  not  in  the  eighteenth  century  as  it  did  in  the 
eighth.  Alas,  were  thy  six-and-thirty  quartos,  and  the 
six-and-thirty  thousand  other  quartos  and  folios,  and 
flying  sheets  or  reams,  printed  before  and  since  on  the 
same  subject,  all  needed  to  convince  us  of  so  little  ! 
But  what  next  ?  Wilt  thou  help  us  to  embody  the 
divine  Spirit  of  that  Religion  in  a  new  Mythus,  in  a 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  191 

new  vehicle  and  vesture,  that  our  Souls,  otherwise  too 
like  p'erishing,  may  live  ?  What !  thou  hast  no  faculty 
in  that  kind?  Only  a  torch  for  burning,  no  hammer 

for  building  ?  Take  our  thanks,  then,  and thyself 

away. 

"Meanwhile  what  are  antiquated  Mythuses  to  me? 
Or  is  the  God  present,  felt  in  my  own  heart,  a  thing 
which  Herr  von  Voltaire  will  dispute  out  of  me  ;  or 
dispute  into  me  ?  To  the  '  Worship  of  Sorrow '  ascribe 
what  origin  and  genesis  thou  pleasest,  has  not  that 
Worship  originated,  and  been  generated  ;  is  it  not  here? 
Feel  it  in  thy  heart,  and  then  say  whether  it  is  of  God ! 
This  is  Belief ;  all  else  is  Opinion, — for  which  latter 
whoso  will,  let  him  worry  and  be  worried." 

"Neither,"  observes  he  elsewhere,  "shall  ye  tear- 
out  one  another's  eyes,  struggling  over  '  Plenary  In- 
spiration/ and  suchlike  :  try  rather  to  get  a  little  even 
Partial  Inspiration,  each  of  you  for  himself.  One  BIBLE 
I  know,  of  whose  Plenary  Inspiration  doubt  is  not  so 
much  as  possible  ;  nay  with  my  own  eyes  I  saw  the 
God's-Hand  writing  it  :  thereof  all  other  Bibles  are  but 
Leaves, — say,  in  Picture- Writing  to  assist  the  weaker 
faculty." 

Or,  to  give  the  wearied  reader  relief,  and  bring  it  to 
an  end,  let  him  take  the  following  perhaps  more  intel- 
ligible passage  : 

"  To  me  in  this  our  life, "  says  the  Professor,  ' '  which  is 
an  internecine  warfare  with  the  Time-spirit,  other  war- 
fare seems  questionable.  Hast  thou  in  any  way  a  Con- 
tention with  thy  brother,  I  advise  thee,  think  well  what 
the  meaning  thereof  is.  If  thou  gauge  it  to  the  bottom, 
it  is  simply  this  :  '  Fellow,  see  !  thou  art  taking  more 
than  thy  share  of  Happiness  in  the  world,  something 
from  my  share,  which,  by  the  Heavens,  thou  shalt 


192  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

not;  nay  I  will  fight  thee  rather.' — Alas,  and  the  whole 
lot  to  be  divided  is  such  a  beggarly  matter,  truly  a 
'feast  of  shells,'  for  the  substance  has  been  spilled 
out  :  not  enough  to  quench  one  Appetite ;  and  the  col- 
lective human  species  clutching  at  them  ! — Can  we  not, 
in  all  such  cases,  rather  say  :  '  Take  it,  thou  too-raven- 
ous individual :  take  that  pitiful  additional  fraction  of  a 
share,  which  I  reckoned  mine,  but  which  thou  so  want- 
est :  take  it  with  a  blessing  :  would  to  Heaven  I  had 
enough  for  thee  !  ' — If  Fidite's  Wissenschaftslehre  be, 
'to  a  certain  extent,  Applied  Christianity,'  surely  to  a 
still  greater  extent,  so  is  this.  We  have  here  not  a 
Whole  Duty  of  Man,  yet  a  Half  Duty,  namely  the  Pas- 
sive half:  could  we  but  do  it,  as  we  can  demonstrate 
it  ! 

"But  indeed  Conviction,  were  it  never  so  excellent, 
is  worthless  till  it  convert  itself  into  Conduct.  Nay 
properly  Conviction  is  not  possible  till  then  ;  inasmuch 
as  all  Speculation  is  by  nature  endless,  formless,  a  vor- 
tex amid  vortices  :  only  by  a  felt  indubitable  certainty 
of  Experience  does  it  find  any  centre  to  revolve  round, 
and  so  fashion  itself  into  a  system.  Most  true  is  it,  as 
a  wise  man  teaches  us,  that  '  Doubt  of  any  sort  cannot 
be  removed  except  by  Action. '  On  which  ground,  too, 
let  him  who  gropes  painfully  in  darkness  or  uncertain 
light,  and  prays  vehemently  that  the  dawn  may  ripen 
into  day,  lay  this  other  precept  well  to  heart,  which  to 
me  was  of  invaluable  service  :  '  Do  the  Duty  which  lies 
nearest  thee,'  which  thou  kno west  to  be  a  Duty  !  Thy 
second  Duty  will  already  have  become  clearer. 

"  May  we  not  say,  however,  that  the  hour  of  Spiritual 
Enfranchisement  is  even  this  :  When  your  Ideal  World, 
wherein  the  whole  man  has  been  dimly  struggling 
inexpressibly  languishing  to  work,  becomes  revealed, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


'93 


and  thrown  open  ;  and  you  discover,  with  amazement 
enough,  like  the  Lothario  in  Wilhelm  Meister,  that  your 
'  America  is  here  or  nowhere '  ?  The  Situation  that  has 
not  its  Duty,  its  Ideal,  was  never  yet  occupied  by  man. 
Yes  here,  in  this  poor,  miserable,  hampered,  despicable 
Actual,  wherein  thou  even  now  standest,  here  or  no- 
where is  thy  Ideal  :  work  it  out  therefrom  ;  and  work- 
ing, believe,  live,  be  free.  Fool !  the  Ideal  is  in  thy- 
self, the  impediment  too  is  in  thyself :  thy  Condition 
is  but  the  stuff  thou  art  to  shape  that  same  Ideal  out 
of :  what  matters  whether  such  stuff  be  of  this  sort  or 
that,  so  the  Form  thou  give  it  be  heroic,  be  poetic  ?  O 
thou  that  pinest  in  the  imprisonment  of  the  Actual,  and 
criest  bitterly  to  the  gods  of  a  kingdom  wherein  to  rule 
and  create,  know  this  of  a  truth  :  the  thing  thou  seek- 
est  is  already  with  thee,  'here  or  nowhere,' couldst 
thou  only  see  ! 

' '  But  it  is  with  man's  Soul  as  it  was  with  Nature  : 
the  beginning  of  Creation  is — Light.  Till  the  eye  have 
vision,  the  whole  members  are  in  bonds.  Divine  mo- 
ment, when  over  the  tempest-tost  Soul,  as  once  over 
the  wild-weltering  Chaos,  it  is  spoken  :  Let  there  be 
Light !  Ever  to  the  greatest  that  has  felt  such  moment 
is  it  not  miraculous  and  God-announcing ;  even  as, 
under  simpler  figures,  to  the  simplest  and  least.  The 
mad  primeval  Discord  is  hushed  ;  the  rudely-jumbled 
conflicting  elements  bind  themselves  into  separate 
Firmaments  :  deep  silent  rock  foundations  are  built 
beneath  ;  and  the  skyey  vault  with  its  everlasting  Lumi- 
naries above  :  instead  of  a  dark  wasteful  Chaos,  we 
have  a  blooming,  fertile,  heaven-encompassed  World. 

"I  too  could  now  say  to  myself:  Be  no  longer  a 
Chaos,  but  a  World,  or  even  Worldkin.  Produce  !  Pro- 
duce !  Were  it  but  the  pitifullest,  infinitesimal  fraction 


194  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

of  a  Product,  produce  it,  in  God's  name  !  Tis  the 
utmost  thou  hast  in  thee  :  out  with  it,  then.  Up,  up  ! 
Whatsoever  thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy 
whole  might.  Work  while  it  is  called  To-day  ;  for  the 
Night  cometh,  wherein  no  man  can  work." 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  X. 

PAUSE. 

THUS  have  we,  as  closely  and  perhaps  satisfactorily 
as,  in  such  circumstances,  might  be,  followed  Teu- 
felsdrockh  through  the  various  successive  states  and 
stages  of  Growth,  Entanglement,  Unbelief,  and  almost 
Reprobation,  into  a  certain  clearer  state  of  what  he 
himself  seems  to  consider  as  Conversion.  ' '  Blame  not 
the  word,"  says  he  ;  "  rejoice  rather  that  such  a  word, 
signifying  such  a  thing,  has  come  to  light  in  our  modern 
Era,  though  hidden  from  the  wisest  Ancients.  The  Old 
World  knew  nothing  of  Conversion  ;  instead  of  an  Ecce 
Homo,  they  had  only  some  Choice  of  Hercules.  It  was 
a  new-attained  progress  in  the  Moral  Development  of 
man  :  hereby  has  the  Highest  come  home  to  the 
bosoms  of  the  most  Limited  ;  what  to  Plato  was  but  a 
hallucination,  and  to  Socrates  a  chimera,  is  now  clear 
and  certain  to  your  Zinzendorfs,  your  Wesleys,  and 
the  poorest  of  their  Pietists  and  Methodists." 

It  is  here,  then,  that  the  spiritual  majority  of  Teu- 
felsdrockh  commences  :  we  are  henceforth  to  see  him 
"  work  in  well-doing,"  with  the  spirit  and  clear  aims  of 
a  Man.  He  has  discovered  that  the  Ideal  Workshop 
he  so  panted  for  is  even  this  same  Actual  ill-furnished 
Workshop  he  has  so  long  been  stumbling  in.  He  can 
say  to  himself :  ' '  Tools  ?  Thou  hast  no  Tools  ?  Why. 


196  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

there  is  not  a  Man,  or  a  Thing,  now  alive  but  has  tools. 
The  basest  of  created  animalcules,  the  Spider  itself,  has 
a  spinning-jenny,  and  warping-mill,  and  power-loom 
within  its  head  :  the  stupidest  of  Oysters  has  a  Papin's- 
Digester,  with  stone-and-lime  house  to  hold  it  in  : 
every  being  that  can  live  can  do  something :  this  let 
him  do. — Tools?  Hast  thou  not  a  Brain,  furnished, 
furnishable  with  some  glimmerings  of  Light  ;  and 
three  fingers  to  hold  a  Pen  withal?  Never  since 
Aaron's  Rod  went  out  of  practice,  or  even  before  it, 
was  there  such  a  wonder-working  Tool :  greater  than 
all  recorded  miracles  have  been  performed  by  Pens. 
For  strangely  in  this  so  solid-seeming  World,  which 
nevertheless  is  in  continual  restless  flux,  it  is  appointed 
that  Sound,  to  appearance  the  most  fleeting,  should  be 
the  most  continuing  of  all  things.  The  WORLD  is  well 
said  to  be  omnipotent  in  this  world  ;  man,  thereby  di- 
vine, can  create  as  by  a  Fiat.  Awake,  arise  !  Speak 
forth  what  is  in  thee  ;  what  God  has  given  thee,  what 
the  Devil  shall  not  take  away.  Higher  task  than  that 
of  Priesthood  was  allotted  to  no  man  :  wert  thou  but 
the  meanest  in  that  sacred  Hierarchy,  is  it  not  honor 
enough  therein  to  spend  and  be  spent? 

"By  this  Art,  which  whoso  will  may  sacrilegiously 
degrade  into  a  handicraft,"  adds  Teufelsdrockh,  "have 
I  thenceforth  abidden.  Writings  of  mine,  not  indeed 
known  as  mine  (for  what  am  /  />),  have  fallen,  perhaps 
not  altogether  void,  into  the  mighty  seed-field  of  Opin- 
ion ;  fruits  of  my  unseen  sowing,  gratifyingly  meet  me 
here  and  there.  I  thank  the  Heavens  that  I  have  now 
found  my  Calling  ;  wherein,  with  or  without  percepti- 
ble result,  I  am  minded  diligently  to  persevere. 

"Nay  how  knowest  thou,"  cries  he,  "but  this  and 
the  other  pregnant  Device,  now  grown  to  be  a  world- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  197 

renowned  far-working  Institution  ;  like  a  grain  of  right 
mustard-seed  once  cast  into  the  right  soil,  and  now 
stretching-out  strong  boughs  to  the  four  winds,  for  the 
birds  of  the  air  to  lodge  in, — may  have  been  properly 
my  doing  ?  Some  one's  doing,  it  without  doubt  was  ; 
from  some  Idea,  in  some  single  Head,  it  did  first  of  all 
take  beginning  :  why  not  from  some  Idea  in  mine?  " 
Does  Teufelsdrockh  here  glance  at  that  "SOCIETY  FOR 
THE  CONSERVATION  OF  PROPERTY  {Eigenthums-conservirende 
Gesellscha/f),"  of  which  so  many  ambiguous  notices 
glide  spectre-like  through  these  inexpressible  Paper- 
bags  ?  "An  Institution,"  hints  he,  "  not  unsuitable  to 
the  wants  of  the  time  ;  as  indeed  such  sudden  extension 
proves  :  for  already  can  the  Society  number,  among  its 
office-bearers  or  corresponding  members,  the  highest 
Names,  if  not  the  highest  Persons,  in  Germany,  Eng- 
land, France  ;  and  contributions,  both  of  money  and 
of  meditation,  pour  in  from  all  quarters  ;  to,  if  possible, 
enlist  the  remaining  Integrity  of  the  world,  and,  defen- 
sively and  with  forethought,  marshal  it  round  this 
Palladium."  Does  Teufelsdrockh  mean,  then,  to  give 
himself  out  as  the  originator  of  that  so  notable  Eigen- 
thums-conservirende ("  Owndom-conserving")  Gesell- 
schaft;  and  if  so,  what,  in  the  Devil's  name,  is  it  ?  He 
again  hints  :  "  At  a  time  when  the  divine  Command- 
ment, Thou  shall  not  steal,  wherein  truly,  if  well  under- 
stood, is  comprised  the  whole  Hebrew  Decalogue,  with 
Solon's  and  Lycurgus's  Constitutions ;  Justinian's  Pan- 
dects, the  Code  Napoleon,  and  all  Codes,  Catechisms, 
Divinities,  Moralities  whatsoever,  that  man  has  hitherto 
devised  (and  enforced  with  Altar-fire  and  Gallows-ropes) 
for  his  social  guidance  :  at  a  time,  I  say,  when  this  di- 
vine Commandment  has  ail-but  faded  away  from  the 
general  remembrance ;  and,  with  little  disguise,  a  new 


198  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

opposite  Commandment,  Thou  shaft  steal,  is  everywhere 
promulgated, — it  perhaps  behooved,  in  this  universal 
dotage  and  deliration,  the  sound  portion  of  mankind  to 
bestir  themselves  and  rally.  When  the  widest  and 
wildest  violations  of  that  divine  right  of  Property,  the 
only  divine  right  now  extant  or  conceivable,  are  sanc- 
tioned and  recommended  by  a  vicious  Press,  and  the 
world  has  lived  to  hear  it  asserted  that  we  have  no  Prop- 
erty in  our  very  Bodies,  but  only  an  accidental  Posses- 
sion and  Life-rent,  what  is  the  issue  to  be  looked  for  ? — 
Hangmen  and  Catchpoles  may,  by  their  noose-gins 
and  baited  fall-traps,  keep  down  the  smaller  sort  of  ver- 
min ;  but  what,  except  perhaps  some  such  Universal 
Association,  can  protect  us  against  whole  meat-devour- 
ing, and  man-devouring  hosts  of  Boa-constrictors  ?  If, 
therefore,  the  more  sequestered  Thinker  have  won- 
dered, in  his  privacy,  from  what  hand  that  perhaps 
not  ill-written  Program  in  the  Public  Journals,  with  its 
high  Prize-Questions  and  so  liberal  Prizes,  could  have 
proceeded, — let  him  now  cease  such  wonder  ;  and, 
with  undivided  faculty,  betake  himself  to  the  Concur- 
renz  (Competition)." 

We  ask:  Has  this  same  "perhaps  not  ill-written 
Program,"  or  any  other  authentic  Transaction  of  that 
Property-conserving  Society,  fallen  under  the  eye  of 
the  British  Reader,  in  any  Journal  foreign  or  domes- 
tic ?  If  so,  what  are  those  Prize-Questions;  what  are 
the  terms  of  Competition,  and  when  and  where  ?  No 
printed  Newspaper-leaf,  no  farther  light  of  any  sort,  to 
be  met  with  in  these  Paper-bags  !  Or  is  the  whole 
business  one  other  of  those  whimsicalities  and  perverse 
inexplicabilities,  whereby  HerrTeufelsdrockh,  meaning 
much  or  nothing,  is  pleased  so  often  to  play  fast-and- 
loose  with  us  ? 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


199 


Here,  indeed,  at  length,  must  the  Editor  give  utter- 
ance to  a  painful  suspicion,  which,  through  late 
Chapters,  has  begun  to  haunt  him  ;  paralyzing  any  little 
enthusiasm  that  might  still  have  rendered  his  thorny 
Biographical  task  a  labor  of  love.  It  is  a  suspicion 
grounded  perhaps  on  trifles,  yet  confirmed  almost  into 
certainty  by  the  more  and  more  discernible  humoristico- 
satirical  tendency  .of  Teufelsdrockh,  in  whom  under- 
ground humors  and  intricate  sardonic  rogueries,  wheel 
within  wheel,  defy  all  reckoning  :  a  suspicion,  in  one 
word,  that  these  Autobiographical  Documents  are 
partly  a  mystification  !  What  if  many  so-called  Fact 
were  little  better  than  a  Fiction  ;  if  here  we  had  no 
direct  Camera-obscura  Picture  of  the  Professor's  History ; 
but  only  some  more  or  less  fantastic  Adumbration, 
symbolically,  perhaps  significantly  enough,  shadowing- 
forth  the  same !  Our  theory  begins  to  be  that,  in 
receiving  as  literally  authentic  what  was  but  hieroglyphi- 
cally  so,  Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  whom  in  that  case  we 
scruple  not  to  name  Hofrath  Nose-of-Wax,  was  made 
a  fool  of,  and  set  adrift  to  make  fools  of  others.  Could 
it  be  expected,  indeed,  that  a  man  so  known  for  impene- 
trable reticence  as  Teufelsdrockh,  would  all  at  once 
frankly  unlock  his  private  citadel  to  an  English  Editor 
and  a  German  Hofrath  ;  and  not  rather  deceptively  in- 
lock  both  Editor  and  Hofrath  in  the  labyrinthic  tortu- 
osities and  covered-ways  of  said  citadel  (having  enticed 
them  thither),  to  see,  in  his  half-devilish  way,  how  the 
fools  would  look  ? 

Of  one  fool,  however,  the  Heir  Professor  will  per- 
haps find  himself  short.  On  a  small  slip,  formerly 
thrown  aside  as  blank,  the  ink  being  ail-but  invisible, 
we  lately  notice,  and  with  effort  decipher,  the  follow- 
ing :  "What  are  your  historical  Facts ;  still  more  your 


200  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

biographical?  Wilt  thou  know  a  Man,  above  all  a 
Mankind,  by  stringing-together  beadrolls  of  what  thou 
namest  Facts  ?  The  Man  is  the  spirit  he  worked  in  ; 
not  what  he  did,  but  what  he  became.  Facts  are  en- 
graved Hierograms,  for  which  the  fewest  have  the  key. 
And  then  how  your  Blockhead  (Dummkopf)  studies 
not  their  Meaning  ;  but  simply  whether  they  are  well 
or  ill  cut,  what  he  calls  Moral  or  Immoral !  Still  worse 
is  it  with  your  Bungler  (P/uscher)  :  such  I  have  seen 
reading  some  Rousseau,  with  pretences  of  interpreta- 
tion ;  and  mistaking  the  ill-cut  Serpent-of-Eternity  for 
a  common  poisonous  reptile."  Was  the  Professor  ap- 
prehensive lest  an  Editor,  selected  as  the  present  boasts 
himself,  might  mistake  the  Teufelsdrockh  Serpent-of- 
Eternity  in  like  manner  ?  For  which  reason  it  was  to  be 
altered,  not  without  underhand  satire,  into  a  plainer 
Symbol  ?  Or  is  this  merely  one  of  his  half-sophisms, 
half-truisms,  which  if  he  can  but  set  on  the  back  of  a 
Figure,  he  cares  not  whither  it  gallop  ?  We  say  not 
with  certainty ;  and  indeed,  so  strange  is  the  Professor, 
can  never  say.  If  our  suspicion  be  wholly  unfounded, 
let  his  own  questionable  ways,  not  our  necessary  cir- 
cumspectness,  bear  the  blame. 

But  be  this  as  it  will,  the  somewhat  exasperated  and 
indeed  exhausted  Editor  determines  here  to  shut  these 
Paper-bags  for  the  present.  Let  it  suffice  that  we  know 
of  Teufelsdrockh,  so  far,  if  "  not  what  he  did,  yet  what 
he  became  : "  the  rather,  as  his  character  has  now  taken 
its  ultimate  bent,  and  no  new  revolution,  of  importance, 
is  to  be  looked  for.  The  imprisoned  Chrysalis  is  now  a 
winged  Psyche  :  and  such,  wheresoever  be  its  flight,  it 
will  continue.  To  trace  by  what  complex  gyrations 
(flights  or  involuntary  waftings)  through  the  mere  ex- 
ternal Life  element,  Teufelsdrockh  reaches  his  Univer- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  201 

sity  Professorship,  and  the  Psyche  clothes  herself  in 
civic  Titles,  without  altering  her  now  fixed  nature, — 
would  be  comparatively  an  unproductive  task,  were 
we  even  unsuspicious  of  its  being-,  for  us  at  least,  a 
false  and  impossible  one.  His  outward  Biography, 
therefore,  which,  at  the  Blumine  Lover's-Leap,  we  saw 
churned  utterly  into  spray-vapor,  may  hover  in  that 
condition,  for  aught  that  concerns  us  here.  Enough 
that  by  survey  of  certain  "pools  and  plashes,"  we  have 
ascertained  its  general  direction ;  do  we  not  already 
know  that,  by  one  way  and  other,  it  has  long  since 
rained-down  again  into  a  stream  ;  and  even  now,  at 
Weissnichtwo,  flows  deep  and  still,  fraught  with  the 
Philosophy  of  Clothes,  and  visible  to  whoso  will  cast  eye 
thereon  ?  Over  much  invaluable  matter,  that  lies  scat- 
tered, likejewels  among  quarry-rubbish,  in  those  Paper- 
catacombs,  we  may  have  occasion  to  glance  back,  and 
somewhat  will  demand  insertion  at  the  right  place  : 
meanwhile  be  our  tiresome  diggings  therein  suspended. 

If  now,  before  reopening  the  great  Clothes-  Volume, 
we  ask  what  our  degree  of  progress,  during  these  Ten 
Chapters,  has  been,  towards  right  understanding  of  the 
Clothes-Philosophy,  let  not  our  discouragement  be- 
come total.  To  speak  in  that  old  figure  of  the  Hell- 
gate  Bridge  over  Chaos,  a  few  flying  pontoons  have 
perhaps  been  added,  though  as  yet  they  drift  straggling 
on  the  Flood ;  how  far  they  will  reach,  when  once  the 
chains  are  straightened  and  fastened,  can,  at  present, 
only  be  matter  of  conjecture. 

So  much  we  already  calculate  :  Through  many  a 
little  loop-hole,  we  have  had  glimpses  into  the  internal 
world  of  Teufelsdrockh  ;  his  strange  mystic,  almost 
magic  Diagram  of  the  Universe,  and  how  it  was 
gradually  drawn,  is  not  henceforth  altogether  dark  to 


202  SAXTOX  KESARTUS. 

us.  Those  mysterious  ideas  on  TIME,  which  merit 
consideration,  and  are  not  wholly  unintelligible  with 
such,  may  by  and  by  prove  significant.  Still  more  may 
his  somewhat  peculiar  view  of  Nature,  the  decisive 
Oneness  he  ascribes  to  Nature.  How  all  Nature  and 
Life  are  but  one  Garment,  a  "Living  Garment,"  woven 
and  ever  aweaving  in  the  "Loom  of  Time;"  is  not 
here,  indeed,  the  outline  of  a  whole  Clothes-Philosophy  ; 
at  least  the  arena  it  is  to  work  in  ?  Remark,  too,  that 
the  Character  of  the  Man,  nowise  without  meaning  in 
such  a  matter,  becomes  less  enigmatic  :  amid  so  much 
tumultuous  obscurity,  almost  like  diluted  madness,  do 
not  a  certain  indomitable  Defiance  and  yet  a  boundless 
Reverence  seem  to  loom  forth,  as  the  two  mountain- 
summits,  on  whose  rock-strata  all  the  rest  were  based 
and  built  ? 

Nay  further,  may  we  not  say  that  Teufelsdrockh's 
Biography,  allowing  it  even,  as  suspected,  only  a 
hieroglyphical  truth,  exhibits  a  man,  as  it  were  pre- 
appointed  for  Clothes- Philosophy  ?  To  look  through 
the  Shows  of  things  into  Things  themselves  he  is  led 
and  compelled.  The  "Passivity"  given  him  by  birth 
is  fostered  by  all  turns  of  his  fortune.  Everywhere 
cast  out,  like  oil  out  of  water,  from  mingling  in  any 
Employment,  in  any  public  Communion,  he  has  no 
portion  but  Solitude,  and  a  life  of  Meditation.  The 
whole  energy  of  his  existence  is  directed,  through  long 
years,  on  one  task  :  that  of  enduring  pain,  if  he  cannot 
cure  it.  Thus  everywhere  do  the  Shows  of  things 
oppress  him,  withstand  him,  threaten  him  with  fear- 
fullest  destruction  :  only  by  victoriously  penetrating 
into  Things  themsel"  2s  can  he  find  peace  and  a  strong- 
hold. But  is  not  this  same  locking-through  the  Shows, 
or  Vestures,  into  the  Things,  even  the  first  preliminary 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


203 


to  a  Philosophy  of  Clothes  •>  Do  we  not,  in  all  this, 
discern  some  beckonings  towards  the  true  higher  pur- 
port of  such  a  Philosophy  ;  and  what  shape  it  must 
assume  with  such  a  man,  in  such  an  era  ? 

Perhaps  in  entering  on  Book  Third,  the  courteous 
Reader  is  not  utterly  without  guess  whither  he  is 
bound  :  nor,  let  us  hope,  for  all  the  fantastic  Dream- 
Grottoes  through  which,  as  is  our  lot  with  Teufels- 
drbckh,  he  must  wander,  will  there  be  wanting  between 
whiles  some  twinkling  of  a  steady  Polar  Star. 


204  SAKTOR  RESARTUS. 


BOOK  THIRD. 

CHAPTER  I. 

INCIDENT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY. 

As  a  wonder-loving  and  wonder-seeking  man,  Teu- 
felsdrockh,  from  an  early  part  of  this  Clothes-Volume, 
has  more  and  more  exhibited  himself.  Striking  it  was, 
amid  all  his  perverse  cloudiness,  with  what  force  of 
vision  and  of  heart  he  pierced  into  the  mystery  of  the 
World  ;  recognizing  in  the  highest  sensible  phenomena, 
so  far  as  Sense  went,  only  fresh  or  faded  Raiment ;  yet 
ever,  under  this,  a  celestial  Essence  thereby  rendered 
visible  :  and  while,  on  the  one  hand,  he  trod  the  old 
rags  of  Matter,  with  their  tinsels,  into  the  mire,  he  on 
the  other  everywhere  exalted  Spirit  above  all  earthly 
principalities  and  powers,  and  worshipped  it,  though 
under  the  meanest  shapes,  with  a  true  Platonic  mystic- 
ism. What  the  man  ultimately  purposed  by  thus  cast- 
ing his  Greek-fire  into  the  general  Wardrobe  of  the 
Universe ;  what  such,  more  or  less  complete,  rending 
and  burning  of  Garments,  throughout  the  whole  com- 
pass of  Civilized  Life  and  Speculation,  should  lead  to ; 
the  rather  as  he  was  no  Adamite,  in  any  sense,  and 
could  not,  like  Rousseau,  recommend  either  bodily  or 
intellectual  Nudity,  and  a  return  to  the  savage  state  :  all 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  205 

this  our  readers  are  now  bent  to  discover ;  this  is,  in 
fact,  properly  the  gist  and  purport  of  Professor  Teufels- 
drockh's  Philosophy  of  Clothes. 

Be  it  remembered,  however,  that  such  purport  is 
here  not  so  much  evolved,  as  detected  to  lie  ready  for 
evolving.  We  are  to  guide  our  British  Friends  into  the 
new  Gold-country,  and  show  them  the  mines  ;  nowise 
to  dig-out  and  exhaust  its  wealth,  which  indeed  remains 
for  all  time  inexhaustible.  Once  there,  let  each  dig  for 
his  own  behoof,  and  enrich  himself. 

Neither,  in  so  capricious  inexpressible  a  Work  as 
this  of  the  Professor's  can  our  course  now  more  than 
formerly  be  straightforward,  step  by  step,  but  at  best 
leap  by  leap.  Significant  Indications  stand-out  here 
and  there  ;  which  for  the  critical  eye,  that  looks  both 
widely  and  narrowly,  shape  themselves  into  some 
ground-scheme  of  a  Whole  :  to  select  these  with  judg- 
ment, so  that  a  leap  from  one  to  the  other  be  possible, 
and  (in  our  old  figure)  by  chaining  them  together,  a 
passable  Bridge  be  effected  :  this,  as  heretofore,  con- 
tinues our  only  method.  Among  such  light-spots,  the 
following,  floating  in  much  wild  matter  about  Per- 
fectibility, has  seemed  worth  clutching  at : 

"  Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  incident  in  Modern 
History,"  says  Teufelsdrockh,  "is  not  the  Diet  of 
Worms,  still  less  the  Battle  of  Austerlitz,  Waterloo, 
Peterloo,  or  any  other  Battle ;  but  an  incident  passed 
carelessly  over  by  most  Historians,  and  treated  with 
some  degree  of  ridicule  by  others  :  namely,  George 
Fox's  making  to  himself  a  suit  of  Leather.  This  man, 
the  first  of  the  Quakers,  and  by  trade  a  Shoemaker,  was 
one  of  those,  to  whom,  under  ruder  or  purer  form,  the 
Divine  Idea  of  the  Universe  is  pleased  to  manifest  itself; 
and,  across  all  the  hulls  of  Ignorance  and  earthly  Deg- 


206  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

radation,  shine  through,  in  unspeakable  Awfulness, 
unspeakable  Beauty,  on  their  souls  :  who  therefore  are 
rightly  accounted  Prophets,  God-possessed  ;  or  even 
Gods,  as  in  some  periods  it  has  chanced.  Sitting  in 
his  stall ;  working  on  tanned  hides,  amid  pincers,  paste, 
horns,  rosin,  swine-bristles,  and  a  nameless  flood  of 
rubbish,  this  youth  had,  nevertheless,  a  Living  Spirit 
belonging  to  him ;  also  an  antique  Inspired  Volume, 
through  which,  as  through  a  window,  it  could  look  up- 
wards, and  discern  its  celestial  Home.  The  task  of  a 
daily  pair  of  shoes,  coupled  even  with  some  prospect 
of  victuals,  and  an  honorable  Mastership  in  Cordwain- 
ery,  and  perhaps  the  post  of  Thirdborough  in  his  hun- 
dred, as  the  crown  of  long  faithful  sewing, — was  no- 
wise satisfaction  enough  to  such  a  mind  :  but  ever  amid 
the  boring  and  hammering  came  tones  from  that  far 
country,  came  Splendors  and  Terrors ;  for  this  poor 
Cordwainer,  as  we  said,  was  a  Man  and  the  Temple 
of  Immensity,  wherein  as  Man  he  had  been  sent  to 
minister,  was  full  of  holy  mystery  to  him. 

"  The  Clergy  of  the  neighborhood,  the  ordained 
Watchers  and  Interpreters  of  that  same  holy  mystery, 
listened  with  unaffected  tedium  to  his  consultations, 
and  advised  him,  as  the  solution  of  such  doubts,  to 
'  drink  beer  and  dance  with  the  girls. '  Blind  leaders 
of  the  blind  !  For  what  end  were  their  tithes  levied 
and  eaten  ;  for  what  were  their  shovel-hats  scooped 
out,  and  their  surplices  and  cassock-aprons  girt-on  ; 
and  such  a  church-repairing,  and  chaffering,  and  organ- 
ing,  and  other  racketing,  held  over  that  spot  of  God's 
Earth, — if  Man  were  but  a  Patent  Digester,  and  the 
Belly  with  its  adjuncts  the  grand  Reality  ?  Fox  turned 
from  them,  with  tears  and  a  sacred  scorn,  back  to  his 
Leather-parings  and  his  Bible.  Mountains  of  encum- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  207 

brance,  higher  than  ./Etna,  had  been  heaped  over  that 
Spirit  :  but  it  was  a  Spirit,  and  would  not  lie  buried  there. 
Through  long  days  and  nights  of  silent  agony,  it  strug- 
gled and  wrestled,  with  a  man's  force,  to  be  free  :  how  its 
prison-mountains  heaved  and  swayed  tumultuously,  as 
the  giant  spirit  shook  them  to  this  hand  and  that,  and 
emerged  into  the  light  of  Heaven  !  That  Leicester  shoe- 
shop,  had  men  known  it,  was  a  holier  place  than  any 
Vatican  or  Loretto-shrine. — 'So  bandaged,  and  ham- 
pered and  hemmed  in,'  groaned  he,  'with  thousand  re- 
quisitions, obligations,  straps,  tatters,  and  tagrags,  I 
can  neither  see  nor  move  :  not  my  own  am  I,  but  the 
World's  ;  and  Time  flies  fast,  and  Heaven  is  high,  and 
Hell  is  deep  :  Man  !  bethink  thee,  if  thou  hast  power  of 
Thought !  Why  not ;  what  binds  me  here  ?  Want, 
want  ! — Ha,  of  what  ?  Will  all  the  shoe-wages  under 
the  Moon  ferry  me  across  into  that  far  Land  of  Light? 
Only  Meditation  can,  and  devout  Prayer  to  God.  I 
will  to  the  woods  :  the  hollow  of  a  tree  will  lodge  me, 
wild-berries  feed  me ;  and  for  Clothes,  cannot  I  stitch 
myself  one  perennial  suit  of  Leather  !  ' 

"Historical  Oil-painting,"  continues  Teufelsdrockh, 
"  is  one  of  the  Arts  I  never  practiced ;  therefore  shall  I 
not  decide  whether  this  subject  were  easy  of  execution 
on  the  canvas.  Yet  often  has  it  seemed  to  me  as  if 
such  first  outflashing  of  man's  Freewill,  to  lighten, 
more  and  more  into  Day,  the  Chaotic  Night  that 
threatened  to  ingulf  him  in  its  hindrances  and  its 
horrors,  were  properly  the  only  grandeur  there  is  in 
History.  Let  some  living  Angelo  or  Rosa,  with  seeing 
eye  and  understanding  heart,  picture  George  Fox  on 
that  morning,  when  he  spreads-out  his  cutting-board 
for  the  last  time,  and  cuts  cowhides  by  unwonted 
patterns,  and  stitches  them  together  into  one  con- 


208  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

tinuous  all-including  Case,  the  farewell  service  of  his 
awl !  Stitch  away,  thou  noble  Fox  :  every  prick  of 
that  little  instrument  is  pricking  into  the  heart  of 
Slavery,  and  World-worship,  and  the  Mammon-god. 
Thy  elbows  jerk,  as  in  strong  swimmer-strokes,  and 
every  stroke  is  bearing  thee  across  the  Prison-ditch, 
within  which  Vanity  holds  her  Workhouse  and  Ragfair, 
into  lands  of  true  Liberty  ;  were  the  work  done,  there 
is  in  broad  Europe  one  Free  Man,  and  thou  art  he  ! 

"  Thus  from  the  lowest  depth  there  is  a  path  to  the 
loftiest  height  ;  and  for  the  Poor  also  a  Gospel  has 
been  published.  Surely  if,  as  D'Alembert  asserts,  my 
illustrious  namesake,  Diogenes,  was  the  greatest  man 
of  Antiquity,  only  that  he  Mranted  Decency,  then  by 
stronger  reason  is  George  Fox  the  greatest  of  the  Mod- 
erns, and  greater  than  Diogenes  himself :  for  he  too 
stands  on  the  adamantine  basis  of  his  Manhood,  cast- 
ing aside  all  props  and  shores  ;  yet  not,  in  half-savage 
Pride,  undervaluing  the  Earth ;  valuing  it  rather,  as  a 
place  to  yield  him  warmth  and  food,  he  looks  Heaven- 
ward from  his  Earth,  and  dwells  in  an  element  of  Mercy 
and  Worship,  with  a  still  Strength,  such  as  the  Cynic's 
Tub  did  nowise  witness.  Great,  truly,  was  that  Tub  ; 
a  temple  from  which  man's  dignity  and  divinity  was 
scornfully  preached  abroad  :  but  greater  is  the  Leather 
Hull,  for  the  same  sermon  was  preached  there,  and  not 
in  Scorn  but  in  Love." 

George  Fox's  "  perennial  suit,"  with  all  that  it  held, 
has  been  worn  quite  into  ashes  for  nigh  two  centuries  ; 
why,  in  a  discussion  on  the  Perfectibility  of  Society, 
reproduce  it  now  ?  Not  out  of  blind  sectarian  partisan- 
ship :  Teufelsdrockh  himself  is  no  Quaker  ;  with  all  his 
pacific  tendencies,  did  not  we  see  him,  in  that  scene 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


209 


at  the  North  Cape,  with  the  Archangel  Smuggler,  exhibit 
fire-arms  ? 

For  us,  aware  of  his  deep  Sansculottism,  there  is 
more  meant  in  this  passage  than  meets  the  ear.  At  the 
same  time,  who  can  avoid  smiling  at  the  earnestness 
and  Boeotian  simplicity  (if  indeed  there  be  not  an  under- 
hand satire  in  it),  with  which  that  "  Incident  "  is  here 
brought  forward ;  and,  in  the  Professor's  ambiguous 
way,  as  clearly  perhaps  as  he  durst  in  Weissnichtwo, 
recommended  to  imitation  !  Does  Teufelsdrockh  an- 
ticipate that,  in  this  age  of  refinement,  any  considerable 
class  of  the  community,  by  way  of  testifying  against 
the  "  Mammon-god,"  and  escaping  from  what  he  calls 
"  Vanity's  Workhouse  and  Ragfair,"  where  doubtless 
some  of  them  are  toiled  and  whipped  and  hoodwinked 
sufficiently, — will  sheathe  themselves  in  close-fitting 
cases  of  Leather  ?  The  idea  is  ridiculous  in  the  extreme. 
Will  Majesty  lay  aside  its  robes  of  state,  and  Beauty  its 
frills  and  train-gowns,  for  a  second-skin  of  tanned  hide? 
By  which  change  Huddersfield  and  Manchester,  and 
Coventry  and  Paisley,  and  the  Fancy-Bazaar,  were  re- 
duced to  hungry  solitudes  ;  and  only  Day  and  Martin 
could  profit.  For  neither  would  Teufelsdrockh's  mad 
daydream,  here  as  we  presume  covertly  intended,  of 
levelling  Society  (levelling  it  indeed  with  a  vengeance, 
into  one  huge  drowned  marsh  !  ),  and  so  attaining  the 
political  effects  of  Nudity  without  its  frigorific  or  other 
consequences, — be  thereby  realized.  Would  not  the 
rich  man  purchase  a  waterproof  suit  of  Russia  Leather; 
and  the  high-born  Belle  step-forth  in  red  or  azure  mo- 
rocco, lined  with  shamoy  :  the  black  cowhide  being  left 
to  the  Drudges  and  Gibeonites  of  the  world  ;  and  so  all 
the  old  Distinctions  be  re-established  ? 


2IO 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


Or  has  the  Professor  his  own  deeper  intention  ;  and 
laughs  in  his  sleeve  at  our  strictures  and  glosses,  which 
indeed  are  but  a  part  thereof? 


SARTOR  RES  ART  US. 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHURCH-CLOTHES. 

NOT  less  questionable  is  his  Chapter  on  Church- 
Clothes,  which  has  the  farther  distinction  of  being  the 
shortest  in  the  Volume.  We  here  translate  it  entire  : 

"  By  Church-Clothes,  it  need  not  be  premised  that  I 
mean  infinitely  more  than  Cassocks  and  Surplices;  and 
do  not  at  all  mean  the  mere  haberdasher  Sunday  Clothes 
that  men  go  to  Church  in.  Far  from  it !  Church- 
Clothes  are,  in  our  vocabulary,  the  Forms,  the  Vestures, 
under  which  men  have  at  various  periods  embodied 
and  represented  for  themselves  the  Religious  Principle; 
that  is  to  say,  invested  the  Divine  Idea  of  the  World 
with  a  sensible  and  practically  active  Body,  so  that  it 
might  dwell  among  them  as  a  living  and  life-giving 
WORD. 

"These  are  unspeakably  the  most  important  of  all 
the  vestures  and  garnitures  of  Human  Existence.  They 
are  first  spun  and  woven,  I  may  say,  by  that  wonder 
of  wonders,  SOCIETY  ;  for  it  is  still  only  when  '  two  or 
three  are  gathered  together,'  that  Religion,  spiritually 
existent,  and  indeed  indestructible,  however  latent,  in 
each,  first  outwardly  manifests  itself  (as  with  '  cloven 
tongues  of  fire'),  and  seeks  to  be  embodied  in  a  visible 
Communion  and  Church  Militant.  Mystical,  more 
than  .magical,  is  that  Communing  of  Soul  with  Soul, 
both  looking  heavenward :  here  properly  Soul  first 


212  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

speaks  with  Soul ;  for  only  in  looking  heavenward, 
take  it  in  what  sense  you  may,  not  in  looking  earth- 
ward, does  what  we  can  call  Union,  mutual  Love,  So- 
ciety, begin  to  be  possible.  How  true  is  that  of  Novalis: 
'  It  is  certain,  my  Belief  gains  quite  infinitely  the  mo- 
ment I  can  convince  another  mind  thereof ! '  Gaze  thou 
in  the  face  of  thy  Brother,  in  those  eyes  where  plays 
the  lambent  fire  of  Kindness,  or  in  those  where  rages 
the  lurid  conflagration  of  Anger  ;  feel  how  thy  own  so 
quiet  Soul  is  straightway  involuntarily  kindled  with  the 
like,  and  ye  blaze  and  reverberate  on  each  other,  tfll  it 
is  all  one  limitless  confluent  flame  (of  embracing  Love, 
or  of  deadly-grappling  Hate) ;  and  then  say  what  mi- 
raculous virtue  goes  out  of  man  into  man.  But  if  so, 
through  all  the  thick-plied  hulls  of  our  Earthly  Life  ; 
how  much  more  when  it  is  of  the  Divine  Life  we  speak, 
and  inmost  ME  is,  as  it  were,  brought  into  contact 
with  inmost  ME  ! 

"Thus  was  it  that  I  said,  the  Church-Clothes  are  first 
spun  and  woven  by  Society  ;  outward  Religion  origi- 
nates by  Society,  Society  becomes  possible  by  Religion. 
Nay,  perhaps,  every  conceivable  Society,  past  and 
present,  may  well  be  figured  as  properly  and  wholly  a 
Church,  in  one  or  other  of  these  three  predicaments  : 
an  audibly  preaching  and  prophesying  Church,  which 
is  the  best ;  second,  a  Church  that  struggles  to  preach 
and  prophesy,  but  cannot  as  yet,  till  its  Pentecost 
come  ;  and  third  and  worst,  a  Church  gone  dumb  with 
old  age,  or  which  only  mumbles  delirium  prior  to  dis- 
solution. Whoso  fancies  that  by  Church  is  here  meant 
Chapterhouses  and  Cathedrals,  or  by  preaching  and 
prophesying,  mere  speech  and  chanting,  let  him,  "says 
the  oracular  Professor,  "read  on,  light  of  heart  (getros- 
fan  Muthes). " 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  2l$ 

"  But  with  regard  to  your  Church  proper,  and  the 
Church-Clothes  specially  recognized  as  Church-Clothes, 
I  remark,  fearlessly  enough,  that  without  such  Vestures 
and  sacred  Tissues  Society  has  not  existed,  and  will 
not  exist.  For  if  Government  is,  so  to  speak,  the  out- 
ward SKIN  of  the  Body  Politic,  holding  the  whole  to- 
gether and  protecting  it;  and  all  your  Craft-Guilds,  and 
Associations  for  Industry,  of  hand  or  of  head,  are  the 
Fleshly  Clothes,  the  muscular  and  osseous  Tissues 
(lying  under  such  SKIN),  whereby  Society  stands  and 
works  ; — then  is  Religion  the  inmost  Pericardial  and 
Nervous  Tissue,  which  ministers  Life  and  warm  Circu- 
lation to  the  whole.  Without  which  Pericardial  Tissue 
the  Bones  and  Muscles  (of  Industry)  were  inert,  or  an- 
imated only  by  a  Galvanic  vitality;  the  SKIN  would  be- 
come a  shrivelled  pelt,  or  fast-rotting  raw-hide;  and 
Society  itself  a  dead  carcass, — deserving  to  be  buried. 
Men  were  no  longer  Social,  but  Gregarious  ;  which 
latter  state  also  could  not  continue,  but  must  gradually 
issue  in  universal  selfish  discord,  hatred,  savage  isola- 
tion, and  dispersion  ; — whereby,  as  we  might  continue 
to  say,  the  very  dust  and  dead  body  of  Society  would 
have  evaporated  and  become  abolished.  Such,  and  so 
all-important,  all-sustaining,  are  the  Church-Clothes  to 
civilized  or  even  to  rational  men. 

"Meanwhile,  in  our  era  of  the  World,  those  same 
Church-Clothes  have  gone  sorrowfully  out-at-elbows  : 
nay,  far  worse,  many  of  them  have  become  mere  hol- 
low Shapes,  or  Masks,  under  which  no  living  Figure  or 
Spirit  any  longer  dwells;  but  only  spiders  and  unclean 
beetles,  in  horrid  accumulation,  drive  their  trade  ;  and 
the  mask  still  glares  on  you  with  its  glass-eyes,  in 
ghastly  affectation  of  Life,— some  generation-and-half 
after  Religion  has  quite  withdrawn  from  it,  and  in  un- 


It 1 4  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

noticed  nooks  is  weaving  for  herself  new  Vestures, 
wherewith  to  reappear,  and  bless  us,  or  our  sons  01 
grandsons.  As  a  Priest,  or  Interpreter  of  the  Holy,  is 
the  noblest  and  highest  of  all  men,  so  is  a  Sham-priest 
(Schein-priester)  the  falsest  and  basest ;  neither  is  it 
doubtful  that  his  Canonicals,  were  they  Popes'  Tiaras, 
will  one  day,  be  torn  from  him,  to  make  bandages  for 
the  wounds  of  mankind ;  or  even  to  burn  into  tinder, 
for  general  scientific  or  culinary  purposes. 

"  All  which,  as  out  of  place  here,  falls  to  be  handled 
in  my  Second  Volume,  On  the  Palingenesia,  or  New- 
birth  of  Society ;  which  volume,  as  treating  practically 
of  the  Wear,  Destruction,  and  Retexture  of  Spiritual 
Tissues,  or  Garments,  forms,  properly  speaking,  the 
Transcendental  or  ultimate  Portion  of  this  my  work 
on  Clothes,  and  is  already  in  a  state  of  forwardness." 

And  herewith,  no  farther  exposition,  note,  or  com- 
mentary being  added,  does  Teufelsdrockh  and  must 
his  Editor  now,  terminate  the  singular  chapter  on 
Church-Clothes  1 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  21,j 


CHAPTER  III. 

SYMBOLS. 

PROBABLY  if  will  elucidate  the  draft  of  these  foregoing 
obscure  utterances,  if  we  here  insert  somewhat  of  our 
Professor's  speculations  on  Symbols.  To  state  his 
whole  doctrine,  indeed,  were  beyond  our  compass  : 
nowhere  is  he  more  mysterious,  impalpable,  than  in 
this  of  "  Fantasy  being  the  organ  of  the  Godlike;  "  and 
how  "Man  thereby,  though  based,  to  all  seeming,  on 
the  small  Visible,  does  nevertheless  extend  down  into 
the  infinite  deeps  of  the  Invisible,  of  which  Invisible, 
indeed,  his  Life  is  properly  the  bodying  forth. "  Let  us, 
omitting  these  high  transcendental  aspects  of  the  matter, 
study  to  glean  (whether  from  the  Paper-bags  or  the 
Printed  Volume)  what  little  seems  logical  and  practical, 
and  cunningly  arrange  it  into  such  degree  of  coherence 
as  it  will  assume.  By  way  of  proem,  take  the  follow- 
ing not  injudicious  remarks : 

"  The  benignant  efficacies  of  Concealment,"  cries 
our  Professor,  ' '  who  shall  speak  or  sing  ?  SILENCE  and 
SECRECY  !  Altars  might  still  be  raised  to  them  (were  this 
an  altar-building  time)  for  universal  worship.  Silence  is 
the  element  in  which  great  things  fashion  themselves 
together  ;  that  at  length  they  may  emerge,  full-formed 
and  majestic,  into  the  daylight  of  Life,  which  they  are 
thenceforth  to  rule.  Not  William  the  Silent  only,  but 
all  the  considerable  men  I  have  known,  and  the  most 


2i6  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

undiplomatic  and  unstrategic  of  these,  forbore  to  bab- 
ble of  what  they  were  creating  and  projecting.  Nay, 
in  thy  own  mean  perplexities,  do  thou  thyself  but  hold 
thy  tongue  for  one  day  :  on  the  morrow,  how  much 
clearer  are  the  purposes  and  duties ;  what  wreck  and 
rubbish  have  those  mute  workmen  within  these  swept 
away,  when  intrusive  noises  were  shut  out  !  Speech  is 
too  often  not,  as  the  Frenchmen  defined  it,  the  art  of 
concealing  Thought ;  but  of  quite  stifling  and  suspend- 
ing Thought,  so  that  there  is  none  to  conceal.  Speech 
too  is  great,  but  not  the  greatest.  As  the  Swiss  In- 
scription says  :  Sprechenistsilbern,  S chweig en  ist  golden 
(Speech  is  silvern,  Silence  is  golden) ;  or  as  I  might 
rather  express  it :  Speech  is  of  Time,  Silence  is  of 
Eternity. 

"Bees  will  not  work  except  in  darkness;  Thought 
will  not  work  except  in  Silence  :  neither  will  Virtue 
work  except  in  Secrecy.  Let  not  thy  left  hand  know 
what  thy  right  hand  doeth  !  Neither  shalt  thou  prate 
even  to  thy  own  heart  of  '  those  secrets  known  to  all.' 
Is  not  Shame  (Schani)  the  soil  of  all  Virtue,  of  all  good 
manners  and  good  morals  ?  Like  other  plants,  Virtue 
will  not  grow  unless  its  root  be  hidden,  buried  from 
the  eye  of  the  sun.  Let  the  sun  shine  on  it,  nay  do 
but  look  at  it  privily  thyself,  the  root  withers,  and  no 
flower  will  glad  thee.  O  my  Friends,  when  we  view 
the  fair  clustering  flowers  that  overwreathe,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Marriage-bower,  and  encircle  man's  life 
with  the  fragrance  and  hues  of  heaven,  what  hand  will 
not  smite  the  foul  plunderer  that  grubs  them  up  by  the 
roots,  and  with  grinning,  grunting  satisfaction,  shows 
us  the  dung  they  flourish  in  !  Men  speak  much  of  the 
Printing-Press  with  its  Newspapers  :  du  Himmel !  what 
are  these  to  Clothes  and  the  Tailor's  Goose  ?  " 


SAR  TOR  RESAR  TUS.  2  r  7 

"Of  kin  to  the  so  incalculable  influences  of  Conceal- 
ment, and  connected  with  still  greater  things,  is  the 
wondrous  agency  of  Symbols.  In  a  Symbol  there  is 
concealment  and  yet  revelation  :  here  therefore,  by  Si- 
lence and  by  Speech  acting  together,  comes  a  double 
significance.  And  if  both  the  Speech  be  itself  high, 
and  the  Silence  fit  and  noble,  how  expressive  will  their 
union  be  !  Thus  in  many  a  painted  Device,  or  simple 
Seal-emblem,  the  commonest  Truth  stands  out  to  us 
proclaimed  with  quite  new  emphasis. 

"  For  it  is  here  that  Fantasy  with  her  mystic  wonder- 
land plays  into  the  small  prose  domain  of  Sense,  and 
becomes  incorporated  therewith.  In  the  Symbol 
proper,  what  we  can  call  a  Symbol,  there  is  ever,  more 
or  less  distinctly  and  directly,  some  embodiment  and 
revelation  of  the  Infinite  ;  the  Infinite  is  made  to  blend 
itself  with  the  Finite,  to  stand  visible,  and  as  it  were, 
attainable  there.  By  Symbols,  accordingly,  is  man 
guided  and  commanded,  made  happy,  made  wretched. 
He  everywhere  finds  himself  encompassed  with  Sym- 
bols, recognized  as  such  or  not  recognized  :  the  Uni- 
verse is  but  one  vast  Symbol  of  God ;  nay  if  thou  wilt 
have  it,  what  is  man  himself  but  a  Symbol  of  God  ; 
is  not  all  that  he  does  symbolical ;  a  revelation  to  Sense 
of  the  mystic  god-given  force  that  is  in  him ;  a  '  Gospel 
of  Freedom,'  which  he,  the  'Messias  of  Nature,' 
preaches,  as  he  can,  by  act  and  word  ?  Not  a  Hut  he 
builds  but  is  the  visible  embodiment  of  a  Thought ;  but 
bears  visible  record  of  invisible  things ;  but  is,  in  the 
transcendental  sense,  symbolical  as  well  as  real. " 

"Man,"  says  the  Professor  elsewhere,  in  quite  antip- 
odal contrast  with  these  high-soaring  delineations, 
which  we  have  here  cut-short  on  the  verge  of  the  inane. 
"Man  is  by  birth  somewhat  of  an  owl.  Perhaps,  too, 


218  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

of  all  the  owleries  that  ever  possessed  him,  the  most 
owlish,  if  we  consider  it,  is  that  of  your  actually  existing 
Motive-Millwrights.  Fantastic  tricks  enough  man  has 
played,  in  his  time  ;  has  fancied  himself  to  be  most 
things,  down  even  to  an  animated  heap  of  Glass  :  but 
to  fancy  himself  a  dead  iron-Balance  for  weighing  Pains 
and  Pleasures  on,  was  reserved  for  this  his  latter  era. 
There  stands  he,  his  Universe  one  huge  Manger,  rilled 
with  hay  and  thistles  to  be  weighed  against  each 
other  ;  and  looks  long-eared  enough.  Alas,  poor  devil ! 
spectres  are  appointed  to  haunt  him  :  one  age  he 
is  hagridden,  bewitched ;  the  next,  priestridden,  be- 
fooled ;  in  all  ages,  bedevilled.  And  now  the  Genius 
of  Mechanism  smothers  him  worse  than  any  Nightmare 
did ;  till  the  Soul  is  nigh  choked  out  of  him,  and  only  a 
kind  of  Digestive,  Mechanic  life  remains.  In  Earth 
and  in  Heaven  he  can  see  nothing  but  Mechanism  ; 
has  fear  for  nothing  else,  hope  in  nothing  else  :  the 
world  would  indeed  grind  him  to  pieces ;  but  cannot 
he  fathom  the  Doctrine  of  Motives,  and  cunningly 
compute  these,  and  mechanize  them  to  grind  the  other 
way? 

"Were  he  not,  as  has  been  said,  purblinded  by 
enchantment,  you  had  but  to  bid  him  open  his  eyes 
and  look.  In  which  country,  in  which  time,  was  it 
hitherto  that  man's  history,  or  the  history  of  any  man, 
went-on  by  calculated  or  calculable  '  Motives  '  ?  What 
make  ye  of  your  Christianities,  and  Chivalries,  and 
Reformations,  and  Marseilles  Hymns,  and  Reigns  of 
Terror?  Nay,  has  not  perhaps  the  Motive-grinder  him- 
self been  in  Love  />  Did  he  never  stand  so  much  as  a 
contested  Election  ?  Leave  him  to  Time,  and  the 
medicating  virtue  of  Nature. " 

"Yes,  Friends,"  elsewhere  observes  the  Professor, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  219 

"not  our  Logical,  Mensurative  faculty,  but  our  Imagi- 
native one  is  King  over  us  ;  I  might  say,  Priest  and 
Prophet  to  lead  us  heavenward ;  or  Magician  and 
Wizard  to  lead  us  helhvard.  Nay,  even  for  the  basest 
Sensualist,  what  is  Sense  but  the  implement  of  Fantasy  ; 
the  vessel  it  drinks  out  of?  Ever  in  the  dullest  exist- 
ence there  is  a  sheen  either  of  Inspiration  or  of  Mad- 
ness (thou  partly  hast  it  in  thy  choice,  which  of  the. 
two),  that  gleams-in  from  the  circumambient  Eternity, 
and  colors  with  its  own  hues  our  little  islet  of  Time. 
The  Understanding  is  indeed  thy  window,  too  clear 
thou  canst  not  make  it  ;  but  Fantasy  is  thy  eye,  with 
its  color-giving  retina,  healthy  or  diseased.  Have  not 
I  myself  known  five-hundred  living  soldiers  sabred 
into  crows'-meat  for  a  piece  of  glazed  cotton,  which 
they  called  their  Flag  ;  which,  had  you  sold  it  at  any 
market-cross,  would  not  have  brought  above  three 
groschen  ?  Did  not  the  whole  Hungarian  Nation  rise, 
like  some  tumultuous  moon-stirred  Atlantic,  when 
Kaiser  Joseph  pocketed  their  Iron  Crown  ;  an  imple- 
ment, as  was  sagaciously  observed,  in  size  and  com- 
mercial value  little  differing  from  a  horse-shoe  ?  It  is 
in  and  through  Symbols  that  man,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, lives,  works,  and  has  his  being :  those 
ages,  moreover,  are  accounted  the  noblest  which  can  the 
best  recognize  symbolical  worth,  and  prize  it  the  high- 
est. For  is  not  a  Symbol  ever,  to  him  who  has  eyes 
for  it,  some  dimmer  or  clearer  revelation  of  the  God- 
like ? 

"Of  Symbols,  however,  I  remark  farther,  that  they 
have  both  an  extrinsic  and  intrinsic  value  ;  oftenest  the 
former  only.  What,  for  instance,  was  in  that  clouted 
Shoe,  which  the  Peasants  bore  aloft  with  them  as  ensign 
in  their  Bauernkrieg  (Peasants'  War)  ?  Or  in  the  Wallet- 


220  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

and-staff  round  which  the  Netherland  Gueux,  glorying 
in  that  nickname  of  Beggars,  heroically  rallied  and  pre- 
vailed, though  against  King  Philip  himself?  Intrinsic 
significance  these  had  none  :  only  extrinsic ;  as  the 
accidental  Standards  of  multitudes  more  or  less  sacredly 
uniting  together ;  in  which  union  itself,  as  above  noted, 
there  is  ever  something  mystical  and  borrowing  of  the 
Godlike.  Under  a  like  category,  too,  stand,  or  stood, 
the  stupidest  heraldic  Coats-of-arms  ;  military  Banners 
everywhere  ;  and  generally  all  national  or  other  secta- 
rian Costumes  and  Customs  :  they  have  no  intrinsic, 
necessary  divineness,  or  even  worth  ;  but  have  acquired 
an  extrinsic  one.  Nevertheless  through  all  these  there 
glimmers  something  of  a  Divine  Idea  ;  as  through 
military  Banners  themselves,  the  Divine  Idea  of  Duty, 
of  heroic  Daring ;  in  some  instances  of  Freedom,  of 
Right.  Nay  the  Highest  ensign  that  men  ever  met 
and  embraced  under,  the  Cross  itself,  had  no  meaning 
save  an  accidental  extrinsic  one. 

"Another  matter  it  is,  however,  when  your  Symbol 
has  intrinsic  meaning,  and  is  of  itself  fit  that  men  should 
unite  round  it  Let  but  the  Godlike  manifest  itself  to 
Sense ;  let  but  Eternity  look,  more  or  less  visibly, 
through  the  Time-Figure  (Zeitbild)  \  Then  is  it  fit  that 
men  unite  there  ;  and  worship  together  before  such 
Symbol ;  and  so  from  day  to  day,  and  from  age  to  age, 
superadd  to  it  new  divineness. 

"Of  this  latter  sort  are  all  true  Works  of  Art:  in 
them  (if  thou  know  a  Work  of  Art  from  a  Daub  of 
Artifice)  wilt  thou  discern  Eternity  looking  through 
Time  ;  the  Godlike  rendered  visible.  Here  too  may 
an  extrinsic  value  gradually  superadd  itself :  thus  cer- 
tain Iliads,  and  the  like,  have,  in  three-thousand  years, 
attained  quite  new  significance.  But  nobler  than  all  in 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  221 

this  kind  are  the  Lives  of  heroic  god-inspired  Men  ;  for 
what  other  Work  of  Art  is  so  divine  ?  In  Death  too,  in 
the  Death  of  the  Just,  as  the  last  perfection  of  a  Work 
of  Art,  may  we  not  discern  symbolic  meaning?  In 
that  divinely  transfigured  Sleep,  as  of  Victory,  resting 
over  the  beloved  face  which  now  knows  thee  no  more, 
read  (if  thou  canst  for  tears)  the  confluence  of  Time 
with  Eternity,  and  some  gleam  of  the  latter  peering 
through. 

"Highest  of  all  Symbols  are  those  wherein  the 
Artist  or  Poet  has  risen  into  Prophet,  and  all  men  can 
recognize  a  present  God,  and  worship  the  same  :  I 
mean  religious  Symbols.  Various  enough  have  been 
such  religious  Symbols,  what  we  call  Religions;  as 
men  stood  in  this  stage  of  culture  or  the  other,  and 
could  worse  or  better  body-forth  the  Godlike  :  some 
Symbols  with  a  transient  intrinsic  worth  ;  many  with 
only  an  extrinsic.  If  thou  ask  to  what  height  man  has 
carried  it  in  this  manner,  look  on  our  divinest  Symbol  : 
on  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  his  Life,  and  his  Biography, 
and  what  followed  therefrom.  Higher  has  the  human 
Thought  not  yet  reached :  this  is  Christianity  and 
Christendom ;  a  Symbol  of  quite  perennial,  infinite 
character  ;  whose  significance  will  ever  demand  to  be 
anew  inquired  into,  and  anew  made  manifest. 

"But,  on  the  whole,  as  Time  adds  much  to  the 
sacredness  of  Symbols,  so  likewise  in  his  progress  he 
at  length  defaces,  or  even  desecrates  them  ;  and  Sym- 
bols, like  all  terrestrial  Garments,  wax  old.  Homer's 
Epos,  has  not  ceased  to  be  true  ;  yet  it  is  no  longer  our 
Epos,  but  shines  in  the  distance,  if  clearer  and  clearer, 
yet  also  smaller  and  smaller,  like  a  receding  Star.  It 
needs  a  scientific  telescope,  it  needs  to  be  reinterpreted 
and  artificially  brought  near  us,  before  we  can  so  much 


222  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

as  know  that  it  was  a  Sun.  So  likewise  a  day  comes 
when  the  Runic  Thor,  with  his  Eddas,  must  withdraw 
into  dimness  ;  and  many  an  African  Mumbo-Jumbo 
and  Indian  Pawaw  be  utterly  abolished.  For  all  things, 
even  Celestial  Luminaries,  much  more  atmospheric 
meteors,  have  their  rise,  their  culmination,  their 
decline." 

"  Small  is  this  which  thou  tellest  me,  that  the  Royal 
Sceptre  is  but  a  piece  of  gilt- wood  ;  that  the  Pyx  has 
become  a  most  foolish  box,  and  truly,  as  Ancient  Pistol 
thought,  'of  little  price.'  A  right  Conjurer  might  I 
name  thee,  couldst  thou  conjure  back  into  these  wooden 
tools  the  divine  virtue  they  once  held. " 

"  Of  this  thing,  however,  be  certain:  wouldst  thou 
plant  for  Eternity,  then  plant  into  the  deep  infinite 
faculties  of  man,  his  Fantasy  and  Heart  ;  wouldst  thou 
plant  for  Year  and  Day,  then  plant  into  his  shallow 
superficial  faculties,  his  Self-love  and  Arithmetical 
Understanding,  what  will  grow  there.  A  Hierarch, 
therefore,  and  Pontiff  of  the  World  will  we  call  him, 
the  Poet  and  inspired  Maker ;  who,  Prometheus-like, 
can  shape  new  Symbols,  and  bring  new  Fire  from 
Heaven  to  fix  it  there.  Such  too  will  not  always  be 
wanting ;  neither  perhaps  now  are.  Meanwhile,  as 
the  average  of  matters  goes,  we  account  him  Legislator 
and  wise  who  can  so  much  as  tell  when  a  Symbol  has 
grown  old,  and  gently  remove  it. 

"When,  as  the  last  English  Coronation1  was  prepar- 
ing," concludes  this  wonderful  Professor,  "I  read  in 
their  Newspapers  that  the  'Champion  of  England/  he 
who  has  to  offer  battle  to  the  Universe  for  his  new 
King,  had  brought  it  so  far  that  he  could  now  '  mount 

1  That  of  George  IV.— ED. 


SAKTOX  RESARTUS. 


223 


his  horse  with  little  assistance,'  1  said  to  myself :  Here 
also  we  have  a  Symbol  well-nigh  superannuated. 
Alas,  move  whithersoever  you  may,  are  not  the  tatters 
and  rags  of  superannuated  worn-out  Symbols  (in  this 
Ragfair  of  a  World)  dropping  off  everywhere,  to  hood- 
wink, to  halter,  to  tether  you  ;  nay,  if  you  shake  them 
not  aside,  threatening  to  accumulate,  and  perhaps 
produce  suffocation  ? " 


324  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

HELOTAGE. 

AT  this  point  we  determine  on  adverting  shortly,  or 
rather  reverting,  to  a  certain  Tract  of  Hofrath  Heu- 
schrecke's,  entitled  Institute  for  the  Repression  of  Popula- 
tion; which  lies,  dishonorably  enough  (with  torn  leaves, 
and  a  perceptible  smell  of  aloetic  drugs)  stuffed  into  the 
Bag  Pisces.  Not  indeed  for  the  sake  of  the  Tract  itself, 
which  we  admire  little  ;  but  of  the  marginal  Notes, 
evidently  in  Teufelsdrockh's  hand,  which  rather  copi- 
ously fringe  it.  A  few  of  these  may  be  in  their  right 
place  here. 

Into  the  Hofrath 's  Institute,  with  its  extraordinary 
schemes  and  machinery  of  Corresponding  Boards  and 
the  like,  we  shall  not  so  much  as  glance.  Enough  for 
us  to  understand  that  Heuschrecke  is  a  disciple  of 
Malthus  ;  and  so  zealous  for  the  doctrine,  that  his  zeal 
almost  literally  eats  him  up.  A  deadly  fear  of  Popu- 
lation possesses  the  Hofrath;  something  like  a  fixed- 
idea  ;  undoubtedly  akin  to  the  more  diluted  forms  of 
Madness.  Nowhere,  in  that  quarter  of  his  intellectual 
world,  is  there  light ;  nothing  but  a  grim  shadow  of 
Hunger ;  open  mouths  opening  wider  and  wider ; 
a  world  to  terminate  by  the  frightfullest  consummation  : 
by  its  too  dense  inhabitants,  famished  into  delirium, 
universally  eating  one  another.  To  make  air  for  him- 
self in  which  strangulation,  choking  enough  to  a  benev* 


SAX  TOR  RESARTUS.  225 

olent  heart,  the  Hofrath  founds,  or  proposes  to  found, 
this  Institute  of  his,  as  the  best  he  can  do.  It  is  only 
with  our  Professor's  comments  thereon  that  we  con- 
cern ourselves. 

First,  then,  remark  that  Teufelsdrockh,  as  a  specula- 
tive Radical,  has  his  own  notions  about  human  dignity  ; 
that  the  Zahdarm  palaces  and  courtesies  have  not  made 
him  forgetful  of  the  Futteral  cottages.  On  the  blank 
cover  of  Heuschrecke's  Tract  we  find  the  following 
indistinctly  engrossed : 

"Two  men  I  honor,  and  no  third.  First,  the  toil- 
worn  Craftsman  that  with  earth-made  Implement 
laboriously  conquers  the  Earth,  and  makes  her  man's. 
Venerable  to  me  is  the  hard  Hand  ;  crooked,  coarse  ; 
wherein  notwithstanding  lies  a  cunning  virtue,  inde- 
feasibly  royal,  as  of  the  Sceptre  of  this  Planet.  Vener- 
able too  is  the  rugged  face,  all  weather-tanned,  besoiled, 
with  its  rude  intelligence  ;  for  it  is  the  face  of  a  man 
living  manlike.  O,  but  the  more  venerable  for  thy 
rudeness,  and  even  because  we  must  pity  as  well  as 
love  thee  !  Hardly-entreated  Brother  !  For  us  was 
thy  back  so  bent,  for  us  were  thy  straight  limbs  and 
fingers  so  deformed :  thou  wert  our  Conscript,  on 
whom  the  lot  fell,  and  fighting  our  battles  wert  so 
marred.  For  in  thee  too  lay  a  god-created  Form,  but 
it  was  not  to  be  unfolded  ;  in  crusted  must  it  stand  with 
the  thick  adhesions  and  defacements  of  Labor  :  and 
thy  body,  like  thy  soul,  was  not  to  know  freedom. 
Yet  toil  on,  toil  on,  thou  art  in  thy  duty,  be  out  of  it 
who  may  ;  thou  toilest  for  the  altogether  indispensable, 
for  daily  bread. 

"A  second  man  I   honor,    and  still  more  highly: 
Him  who  is  seen  toiling  for  the  spiritually  indispens- 
able ;  not  daily  bread,  but  the  bread  of  Life.     Is  not 
15 


226  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

he  too  in  his  duty ;  endeavoring  towards  inward  Har- 
mony ;  revealing  this,  by  act  or  by  word,  through  all 
his  outward  endeavors,  be  they  high  or  low  ?  Highest 
of  all,  when  his  outward  and  his  inward  endeavor  are 
one  :  when  we  can  name  him  Artist ;  not  earthly  Crafts- 
man only,  but  inspired  Thinker,  who  with  heaven- 
made  Implement  conquers  Heaven  for  us !  If  the 
poor  and  humble  toil  that  we  have  Food,  must  not  the 
high  and  glorious  toil  for  him  in  return,  that  he  have 
Light,  have  Guidance,  Freedom,  Immortality  ? — These 
two,  in  all  their  degrees,  I  honor  :  all  else  is  chaff  and 
dust,  which  let  the  wind  blow  whither  it  listeth. 

"Unspeakably  touching  is  it,  however,  when  I  find 
both  dignities  united  ;  and  he  that  must  toil  out- 
wardly for  the  lowest  of  man's  wants,  is  also  toiling 
inwardly  for  the  highest.  Sublimer  in  this  world  know 
I  nothing  than  a  Peasant  Saint,  could  such  now  any- 
where be  met  with.  Such  a  one  will  take  thee  back  to 
Nazareth  itself;  thou  wilt  see  the  splendor  of  Heaven 
spring  forth  from  the  humblest  depths  of  Earth,  like  a 
light  shining  in  great  darkness." 

And  again:  "  It  is  not  because  of  his  toils  that  I 
lament  for  the  poor  :  we  must  all  toil,  or  steal  (how- 
soever we  name  our  stealing),  which  is  worse  ;  no 
faithful  workman  finds  his  task  a  pastime.  The  poor 
is  hungry  and  athirst  ;  but  for  him  also  there  is  food 
and  drink  :  he  is  heavy  laden  and  weary  ;  but  for  him 
also  the  Heavens  send  Sleep,  and  of  the  deepest ;  in 
his  smoky  cribs,  a  clear  dewy  heaven  of  Rest  envelops 
him,  and  fitful  glitterings  of  cloud-skirted  Dreams. 
But  what  I  do  mourn  over  is,  that  the  lamp  of  his  soul 
should  go  out ;  that  no  ray  of  heavenly,  or  even  of  earthly 
knowledge,  should  visit  him  ;  but  only,  in  the  haggard 
darkness,  like  two  spectres,  Fear  and  Indignation  bear 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  227 

him  company.  Alas,  while  the  Body  stands  so  broad 
and  brawny,  must  the  Soul  lie  blinded,  dwarfed,  stupe- 
fied, almost  annihilated  !  Alas,  was  this  too  a  Breath 
of  God  ;  bestowed  in  Heaven,  but  on  earth  never  to  be 
unfolded  ! — That  there  should  one  Man  die  ignorant 
who  had  capacity  for  Knowledge,  this  I  call  a  tragedy, 
were  it  .to  happen  more  than  twenty  times  in  the 
minute,  as  by  some  computations  it  does.  The  miser- 
able fraction  of  Science  which  our  united  Mankind,  in 
a  wide  Universe  of  Nescience,  has  acquired,  why  is  not 
this,  with  all  diligence,  imparted  to  all  ?  " 

Quite  in  an  opposite  strain  is  the  following  :  "The 
old  Spartans  had  a  wiser  method  ;  and  went  out  and 
hunted-down  their  Helots,  and  speared  and  spitted 
them,  when  they  grew  too  numerous.  With  our  im- 
proved fashions  of  hunting,  Herr  Hofrath,  now  after 
the  invention  of  fire-arms,  and  standing-armies,  how 
much  easier  were  such  a  hunt !  Perhaps  in  the  most 
thickly-peopled  country,  some  three  days  annually 
might  suffice  to  shoot  all  the  able-bodied  Paupers  that 
had  accumulated  within  the  year.  Let  Governments 
think  of  this.  The  expense  were  trifling  :  nay  the  very 
carcasses  would  pay  it.  Have  them  salted  and  barrelled  ; 
could  not  you  victual  therewith,  if  not  Army  and  Navy, 
yet  richly  such  infirm  Paupers,  in  workhouses  and 
elsewhere,  as  enlightened  Charity,  dreading  no  evil  of 
them,  might  see  good  to  keep  alive  ?  " 

"And  yet,"  writes  he  farther  on,  "there  must  be 
something  wrong.  A  full-formed  Horse  will,  in  any 
market,  bring  from  twenty  to  as  high  as  two-hundred 
Friedrichs  d'or  :  such  is  his  worth  to  the  world.  A 
full-formed  Man  is  not  only  worth  nothing  to  the 
world,  but  the  world  could  afford  him  a  round  sum 
would  he  simply  engage  to  go  and  hang  himself. 


228  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Nevertheless,  which  of  the  two  was  the  more  cun- 
ningly-devised article,  even  as  an  Engine  ?  Good 
Heavens  !  A  white  European  Man,  standing  on  his 
two  Legs,  with  his  two  five-fingered  Hands  at  his 
shackle-bones,  and  miraculous  Head  on  his  shoulders, 
is  worth,  I  should  say,  from  fifty  to  a  hundred 
Horses  !  " 

"True,  thou  Gold-Hofrath, "  cries  the  Professor  else- 
where :  "  too  crowded  indeed  !  Meanwhile,  what  por- 
tion of  this  inconsiderable  terraqueous  Globe  have  ye 
actually  tilled  and  delved,  till  it  will  grow  no  more  ? 
How  thick  stands  your  Population  in  the  Pampas  and 
Savannas  of  America  ;  round  ancient  Carthage,  and  in 
the  interior  of  Africa ;  on  both  slopes  of  the  Altaic 
chain,  in  the  central  Platform  of  Asia  ;  in  Spain,  Greece, 
Turkey,  Crim  Tartary,  the  Curragh  of  Kildare?  One 
man,  in  one  year,  as  I  have  understood  it,  if  you  lend 
him  Earth,  will  feed  himself  and  nine  others.  Alas, 
where  now  are  the  Hengsts  and  Alarics  of  our  still- 
glowing,  still-expanding  Europe ;  who,  when  their 
home  is  grown  too  narrow,  will  enlist,  and,  like  Fire- 
pillars,  guide  onwards  those  superfluous  masses  of  in- 
domitable living  Valor  ;  equipped,  not  now  with  the 
battle-axe  and  war  chariot,  but  with  the  steam-engine 
and  plough-share  ?  Where  are  they  ? — Preserving  their 
Game  1 " 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


12$ 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE     PHOENIX. 

PUTTING  which  four  singular  Chapters  together,  and 
alongside  of  them  numerous  hints,  and  even  direct 
utterances,  scattered  over  these  Writings  of  his,  we 
come  upon  the  startling  yet  not  quite  unlocked  for 
conclusion,  that  Teufelsdrockh  is  one  of  those  who 
consider  Society,  properly  so  called,  to  be  as  good  as 
extinct ;  and  that  only  the  gregarious  feelings,  and  old 
inherited  habitudes,  at  this  juncture,  hold  us  from  Dis- 
persion, and  universal  national,  civil,  ,  domestic  and 
personal  war  !  He  says  expressly  :  "  For  the  last  three 
centuries,  above  all  for  the  last  three  quarters  of  a  cen- 
tury, that  same  Pericardial  Nervous  Tissue  (as  we 
named  it)  of  Religion,  where  lies  the  Life-essence  of 
Society,  has  been  smote-at  and  perforated,  needfully 
and  needlessly  ;  till  now  it  is  quite  rent  into  shreds  ; 
and  Society,  long  pining,  diabetic,  consumptive,  can 
be  regarded  as  defunct ;  for  those  spasmodic,  galvanic 
sprawlings  are  not  life  ;  neither  indeed  will  they  endure, 
galvanize  as  you  may,  beyond  two  days." 

"Call  ye  that  a  Society,"  cries  he  again,  "where 
there  is  no  longer  any  Social  Idea  extant ;  not  so  much 
as  the  Idea  of  a  common  Home,  but  only  of  a  common 
over-crowded  Lodging-house?  Where  each,  isolated, 
regardless  of  his  neighbor,  turned  against  his  neighbor, 
clutches  what  he  can  get,  and  cries  '  Mine  ! '  and  calls 


236  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

it  Peace,  because,  in  the  cut-purse  and  cut-throat 
Scramble,  no  steel  knives,  but  only  a  far  cunninger 
sort,  can  be  employed  ?  Where  Friendship,  Commun- 
ion, has  become  an  incredible  tradition ;  and  your 
holiest  Sacramental  Supper  is  a  smoking-  Tavern  Dinner, 
with  Cook  for  Evangelist  ?  Where  your  Priest  has  no 
tongue  but  for  plate-licking  :  and  your  high  Guides  and 
Governors  cannot  guide  ;  but  on  all  hands  hear  it  pas- 
sionately proclaimed  :  Laissez  faire  ;  Leave  us  alone 
ofjyour  guidance,  such  light  is  darker  than  darkness  ; 
eat  you  your  wages,  and  sleep  ! 

"  Thus,  too,"  continues  he,  "  does  an  observant  eye 
discern  everywhere  that  saddest  spectacle  :  The  Poor 
perishing,  like  neglected,  foundered  Draught-Cattle,  of 
Hunger  and  Overwork  ;  the  Rich,  still  more  wretchedly 
of  Idleness,  Satiety,  and  Overgrowth.  The  Highest  in 
rank,  at  length,  without  honor  from  the  Lowest ;  scarce- 
ly, with  a  little  mouth-honor,  as  from  tavern-waiters 
who  expect  to  put  it  in  the  bill.  Once-sacred  Symbols 
fluttering  as  empty  Pageants,  whereof  mengrudge  even 
the  expense  ;  a  World  becoming  dismantled  :  in  one 
word,  the  CHURCH  fallen  speechless,  from  obesity  and 
apoplexy  ;  the  STATE  shrunken  into  a  Police-Office, 
straitened  to  get  its  pay  !  " 

We  might  ask,  are  there  many  "  observant  eyes," 
belonging  to  practical  men  in  England  or  elsewhere, 
which  have  descried  these  phenomena  ;  or  is  it  only 
from  the  mystic  elevation  of  a  German  Wahngasse  that 
such  wonders  are  visible  ?  Teufelsdrockh  contends 
that  the  aspect  of  a  "  deceased  or  expiring  Society" 
fronts  us  everywhere,  so  that  whoso  runs  may  read. 
"What,  for  example,"  says  he,  "is  the  universally- 
arrogated  Virtue,  almost  the  sole  remaining  Catholic 
Virtue,  of  these  days  ?  For  some  half  century,  it  has 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


231 


been  the  thing  you  name  '  Independence.'  Suspicion 
of  '  Servility,'  of  reverence  for  Superiors,  the  very  dog- 
leech  is  anxious  to  disavow.  Fools  !  Were  your  Su- 
periors worthy  to  govern,  and  you  worthy  tc  obey,  rever- 
ence for  them  were  even  your  only  possible  freedom. 
Independence,  in  all  kinds,  is  rebellion  ;  if  unjust  re- 
bellion, why  parade  it,  and  everywhere  prescribe  it  ?  " 

But  what  then  ?  Are  we  returning,  as  Rousseau 
prayed,  to  the  state  of  Nature  ?  ' '  The  Soul  Politic  hav- 
ing departed,"  says  Teufelsdrockh,  "  what  can  follow 
but  that  the  Body  Politic  be  decently  interred,  to  avoid 
putrescence  ?  Liberals,  Economists,  Utilitarians 
enough  I  see  marching  with  its  bier,  and  chanting  loud 
paeans,  towards  the  funeral-pile,  where,  amid  wailings 
from  some,  and  saturnalian  revelries  from  the  most,  the 
venerable  Corpse  is  to  be  burnt.  Or,  in  plain  words, 
that  these  men,  Liberals,  Utilitarians,  or  whatsoever 
they  are  called,  will  ultimately  carry  their  point,  and 
dissever  and  destroy  most  existing  Institutions  of 
Society,  seems  a  thing  which  has  some  time  ago  ceased 
to  be  doubtful. 

"Do  we  not  see  a  little  subdivision  of  the  grand 
Utilitarian  Armament  come  to  light  even  in  insulated 
England  ?  A  living  nucleus,  that  will  attract  and  grow, 
does  at  length  appear  there  also  ;  and  under  curious 
phasis  ;  properly  as  the  inconsiderable  fag-end,  and  so 
far  in  the  rear  of  the  others  as  to  fancy  itself  the  van. 
Our  European  Mechanizers  are  a  sect  of  boundless 
diffusion,  activity,  and  co-operative  spirit  :  has  not 
Utilitarianism  flourished  in  high  places  of  Thought, 
here  among  ourselves,  and  in  every  European  country, 
at  some  time  or  other,  within  the  last  fifty  years  ?  If 
now  in  all  countries,  except  perhaps  England,  it  has 
ceased  to  flourish,  or  indeed  to  exist,  among  Thinkers, 


232  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

and  sunk  to  Journalists  and  the  popular  mass, — who 
sees  not  that,  as  hereby  it  no  longer  preaches,  so  the  rea- 
son is,  it  now  needs  no  Preaching,  but  is  in  full  universal 
Action,  the  doctrine  everywhere  known,  and  enthusi- 
astically laid  to  heart  ?  The  fit  pabulum,  in  these  times, 
for  a  certain  rugged  workshop  intellect  and  heart,  no- 
wise without  their  corresponding  workshop  strength 
and  ferocity,  it  requires  but  to  be  stated  in  such  scenes 
to  make  proselytes  enough. — Admirably  calculated  for 
destroying,  only  not  for  rebuilding !  It  spreads  like 
a  sort  of  Dog-madness  ;  till  the  whole  World-kennel  will 
be  rabid  :  then  woe  to  the  Huntsmen,  with  or  without 
their  whips  !  They  should  have  given  the  quadrupeds 
water,"  adds  he;  "  the  water,  namely,  of  Knowledge 
and  of  Life,  while  it  was  yet  time." 

Thus,  if  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  can  be  relied  on,  we 
are  at  this  hour  in  a  most  critical  condition  ;  belea- 
guered by  that  boundless  "Armament  of  Mechanizers  " 
and  Unbelievers,  threatening  to  strip  us  bare  !  "The 
World,"  says  he,  "as  it  needs  must,  is  under  a  process 
of  devastation  and  waste,  which,  whether  by  silent 
assiduous  corrosion,  or  open  quicker  combustion,  as  the 
case  chances,  will  effectually  enough  annihilate  the 
past  Forms  of  Society  ;  replace  them  with  what  it  may. 
For  the  present,  it  is  contemplated  that  when  man's 
whole  Spiritual  Interests  are  once  divested,  these  in- 
numerable stript-off  Garments  shall  mostly  be  burnt ; 
but  the  sounder  Rags  among  them  be  quilted  together 
into  one  huge  Irish  watch-coat  for  the  defence  of  the 
Body  only  !  " — This,  we  think,  is  but  Job's-news  to  the 
humane  reader. 

"Nevertheless,"  cries  Teufelsdrockh,  "who  can  hin- 
der it ;  who  is  there  that  can  clutch  into  the  wheel- 
spokes  of  Destiny,  and  say  to  the  Spirit  of  the  Time  : 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  233 

Turn  back,  I  command  thee  ? — Wiser  were  it  that  we 
yielded  to  the  Inevitable  and  Inexorable,  and  accounted 
even  this  the  best. " 

Nay,  might  not  an  attentive  Editor,  drawing  his  own 
inferences  from  what  stands  written,  conjecture  that 
Teufelsdrockh  individually  had  yielded  to  this  same 
"Inevitable  and  Inexorable"  heartily  enough;  and 
now  sat  waiting  the  issue,  with  his  natural  diabolico- 
angelical  Indifference,  if  not  even  Placidity  ?  Did  we 
not  hear  him  complain  that  the  World  was  a  "  huge 
Ragfair,"  and  the  "rags  and  tatters  of  old  Symbols" 
were  raining-down  everywhere,  like  to  drift  him  in, 
and  suffocate  him  ?  What  with  those  "unhunted  He- 
lots "  of  his  ;  and  the  uneven  sic  vos  non  vobis  pressure 
and  hard-crashing  collision  he  is  pleased  to  discern  in 
existing  things;  what  with  the  so  hateful  "empty 
Masks,"  full  of  beetles  and  spiders,  yet  glaring  out  on 
him,  from  their  glass  eyes,  "  with  a  ghastly  affectation  of 
life," — we  feel  entitled  to  conclude  him  even  willing  that 
much  should  be  thrown  to  the  Devil,  so  it  were  but 
done  gently!  Safe  himself  in  that  "Pinnacle  ofWeiss- 
nichtwo,"  he  would  consent,  with  a  tragic  solemnity, 
that  the  monster  UTILITARIA,  held  back,  indeed,  and 
moderated  by  nose-rings,  halters,  foot-shackles,  and 
every  conceivable  modification  of  rope,  should  go  forth 
to  do  her  work  ; — to  tread  down  old  ruinous  Palaces 
and  Temples  with  her  broad  hoof,  till  the  whole  were 
trodden  down  ;  that  new  and  better  might  be  built ! 
Remarkable  in  this  point  of  view  are  the  following 
sentences. 

"Society,"  says  he,  "is  not  dead:  that  Carcass, 
which  you  call  dead  Society,  is  but  her  mortal  coil 
which  she  has  shuffled-off,  to  assume  a  nobler  ;  she 
herself,  through  perpetual  metamorphoses,  in  fairer  and 


234  SARTOR  RES  AH  TVS. 

fairer  development,  has  to  live  till  Time  also  merge  in 
Eternity.  Wheresoever  two  or  three  Living  Men  are 
gathered  together,  there  is  Society  ;  or  there  it  will  be, 
with  its  cunning  mechanisms  and  stupendous  structures, 
overspreading  this  little  Globe,  and  reaching  upwards 
to  Heaven  and  downwards  to  Gehenna  :  for  always, 
under  one  or  the  other  figure,  it  has  two  authentic  Rev- 
elations, of  a  God  and  of  a  Devil ;  the  Pulpit,  namely, 
and  the  Gallows. " 

Indeed,  we  already  heard  him  speak  of  "  Religion,  in 
unnoticed  nooks,  weaving  for  herself  new  Vestures;" 
— Teufelsdrockh  himself  being  one  of  the  loom-treadles  ? 
Elsewhere  he  quotes  without  censure  that  strange  aph- 
orism of  Saint-Simon's  concerning  which  and  whom 
so  much  were  to  be  said  :  "  L'age  d'or,  quune  aveugle 
tradition  a  place  jusqu'ici  dans  le  passe  est  devant  nous  ; 
The  golden  age,  which  a  blind  tradition  has  hitherto 
placed  in  the  Past,  is  Before  us." — But  listen  again  : 

"When  the  Phoenix  is  fanning  her  funeral  pyre,  will 
there  not  be  sparks  flying  !  Alas,  some  millions  of 
men,  and  among  them  such  as  a  Napoleon,  have  al- 
ready been  licked  into  that  high-eddying  Flame,  and 
like  moths  consumed  there.  Still  also  have  we  to  fear 
that  incautious  beards  will  get  singed. 

"For  the  rest,  in  what  year  of  grace  such  Phoenix- 
cremation  will  be  completed,  you  need  not  ask.  The 
law  of  Perseverance  is  among  the  deepest  in  man  :  by 
nature  he  hates  change ;  seldom  will  he  quit  his  old 
house  till  it  has  actually  fallen  about  his  ears.  Thus 
have  I  seen  Solemnities  linger  as  Ceremonies,  sacred 
Symbols  as  idle  Pageants,  to  the  extent  of  three-hun- 
dred years  and  more  after  all  life  and  sacredness  had 
evaporated  out  of  them.  And  then,  finally,  what  time 
the  Phcenix  Death-Birth  itself  will  require,  depends  on 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  235 

unseen  contingencies. — Meanwhile,  would  Destiny 
offer  Mankind,  that  after,  say  two  centuries  of  convul- 
sion and  conflagration,  more  or  less  vivid,  the  fire-crea- 
tion should  be  accomplished,  and  we  to  find  ourselves 
again  in  a  Living  Society,  and  no  longer  fighting  but 
working, — were  it  not  perhaps  prudent  in  Mankind, 
to  strike  the  bargain  ? " 

Thus  is  Teufelsdrockh  content  that  old  sick  Society 
should  be  deliberately  burnt  (alas,  with  quite  other  fuel 
than  spice-wood)  ;  in  the  faith  that  she  is  a  Phoenix  ; 
and  that  a  new  heavenborn  young  one  will  rise  out  of 
her  ashes  !  We  ourselves,  restricted  to  the  duty  of  In- 
dicator, shall  forbear  commentary.  Meanwhile,  will 
not  the  judicious  reader  shake  his  head,  and  reproach- 
fully, yet  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger,  say  or  think  : 
From  a  Doctor  utriusque  Juris,  titular  Professor  in  a 
University,  and  man  to  whom  hitherto,  for  his  services, 
Society,  bad  as  she  is,  has  given  not  only  food  and 
raiment  (of  a  kind),  but  books,  tobacco  and  gukguk,  we 
expected  more  gratitude  to  his  benefactress  ;  and  less 
of  a  blind  trust  in  the  future,  which  resembles  that 
rather  of  a  philosophical  Fatalist  and  Enthusiast,  than 
of  a  solid  householder  paying  scot-and-lot  in  a  Christian 
country. 


236  SARTOK  RESARTVS. 


CHAPTER  VL 

OLD     C  LOTHES. 

As  mentioned  above,  Teufelsdrockh,  though  a  sans- 
culottist,  is  in  practice  probably  the  politest  man  extant  : 
his  whole  heart  and  life  are  penetrated  and  informed 
with  the  spirit  of  politeness  ;  a  noble  natural  Courtesy 
shines  through  him,  beautifying  his  vagaries  ;  like  sun- 
light, making  a  rosy-fingered,  rainbow-dyed  Aurora  out 
of  mere  aqueous  clouds ;  nay,  brightening  London- 
smoke  itself  into  gold  vapor,  as  from  the  crucible  of  an 
alchemist.  Hear  in  what  earnest  though  fantastic  wise 
he  expresses  himself  on  this  head  : 

"Shall  Courtesy  be  done  only  to  the  rich,  and  only 
by  the  rich  ?  In  Good-breeding,  which  differs,  if  at  all, 
from  High-breeding,  only  as  it  gracefully  remembers 
the  rights  of  others,  rather  than  gracefully  insists  on  its 
own  rights,  I  discern  no  special  connection  with  wealth 
or  birth  :  but  rather  that  it  lies  in  human  nature  itself, 
and  is  due  from  all  men  towards  all  men.  Of  a  truth, 
were  your  Schoolmaster  at  his  post,  and  worth  any- 
thing when  there,  this,  with  so  much  else,  would  be 
reformed.  Nay,  each  man  were  then  also  his  neighbor's 
schoolmaster  ;  till  at  length  a  rude-visaged,  unmannered 
Peasant  could  no  more  be  met  with,  than  a  Peasant 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  237 

unacquainted  with  botanical  Physiology,  or  who  felt 
not  that  the  clod  he  broke  was  created  in  Heaven. 

"  For  whether  thou  bear  a  sceptre  or  a  sledge-ham- 
mer, art  not  thou  ALIVE  ;  is  not  this  thy  brother  ALIVE  ? 
'There  is  but  one  temple  in  the  world,'  says  Novalis, 
'  and  that  temple  is  the  Body  of  Man.  Nothing  is  holier 
than  this  high  Form.  Bending  before  men  is  a  rever- 
ence done  to  this  Revelation  in  the  Flesh.  We  touch 
Heaven,  when  we  lay  our  hands  on  a  human  Body.' 

"  On  which  ground,  I  would  fain  carry  it  farther  than 
most  do  ;  and  whereas  the  English  Johnson  only  bowed 
to  every  Clergyman,  or  man  with  a  shovel-hat,  I  would 
bow  to  every  Man  with  any  sort  of  hat,  or  with  no  hat 
whatever.  Is  not  he  a  temple,  then  ;  the  visible  Mani- 
festation and  Impersonation  of  the  Divinity  ?  And  yet, 
alas,  such  indiscriminate  bowing  serves  not.  For 
there  is  a  Devil  dwells  in  man,  as  well  as  a  Divinity  ; 
and  too  often  the  bow  is  but  pocketed  by  the  former. 
It  would  go  to  the  pocket  of  Vanity  (which  is  your 
clearest  phasis  of  the  Devil,  in  these  times)  ;  therefore 
must  we  withhold  it. 

"The  gladder  am  I,  on  the  other  hand,  to  do  rever- 
ence to  those  Shells  and  outer  Husks  of  the  Body,  where- 
in no  devilish  passion  any  longer  lodges,  but  only  the 
pure  emblem  and  effigies  of  Man  :  I  mean,  to  Empty, 
or  even  to  Cast  Clothes.  Nay,  is  it  not  to  Clothes  that 
most  men  do  reverence :  to  the  fine  frogged  broad- 
cloth, nowise  to  the  'straddling  animal  with  bandy 
legs '  which  it  holds,  and  makes  a  Dignitary  of  ?  Who 
ever  saw  any  Lord  my-lorded  in  tattered  blanket  fas- 
tened with  wooden  skewer?  Nevertheless,  I  say,  there 
is  in  such  worship  a  shade  of  hypocrisy,  a  practical  de- 
ception :  for  how  often  does  the  Body  appropriate  what 


238  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

was  meant  for  the  Cloth  only !  Whoso  would  avoid 
falsehood,  which  is  the  essence  of  all  Sin,  will  perhaps 
see  good  to  take  a  different  course.  That  reverence 
which  cannot  act  without  obstruction  and  perversion 
when  the  Clothes  are  full,  may  have  free  course  when 
they  are  empty.  Even  as,  for  Hindoo  Worshippers, 
the  Pagoda  is  not  less  sacred  than  the  God  ;  so  do  I  too 
worship  the  hollow  cloth  Garment  with  equal  fervor,  as 
when  it  contained  the  Man  :  nay,  with  more,  for  I  now 
fear  no  deception,  of  myself  or  of  others. 

"Did  not  King  Toomtabard,  or,  in  other  words,  John 
Baliol,  reign  long  over  Scotland  ;  the  man  John  Baliol 
being  quite  gone,  and  only  the  '  Toom  Tabard '  (Empty 
Gown)  remaining  ?  What  still  dignity  dwells  in  a  suit 
of  Cast  Clothes  !  How  meekly  it  bears  its  honors  !  No 
haughty  looks,  no  scornful  gesture  :  silent  and  serene, 
it  fronts  the  world  ;  neither  demanding  worship,  nor 
afraid  to  miss  it.  The  Hat  still  carries  the  physiognomy 
of  its  Head  :  but  the  vanity  and  the  stupidity,  and 
goose-speech  which  was  the  sign  of  these  two,  are 
gone.  The  Coat-arm  is  stretched  out,  but  not  to  strike  ; 
the  Breeches,  in  modest  simplicity,  depend  at  ease,  and 
now  at  last  have  a  graceful  flow ;  the  Waistcoat  hides 
no  evil  passion,  no  riotous  desire  ;  hunger  or  thirst  now 
dwells  not  in  it.  Thus  all  is  purged  from  the  gross- 
ness  of  sense,  from  the  carking  cares  and  foul  vices  of 
the  World;  and  rides  there,  on  its  Clothes-Horse ;  as, 
on  a  Pegasus,  might  some  skyey  Messenger,  or  puri- 
fied Apparition,  visiting  our  low  Earth. 

' '  Often,  while  I  sojourned  in  that  monstrous  tuberosity 
of  Civilized  Life,  the  Capital  of  England  ;  and  meditated, 
and  questioned  Destiny,  under  that  ink-sea  of  vapor, 
black,  thick,  and  multifarious  as  Spartan  broth  ;  and 
was  one  lone  soul  amid  those  grinding  millions  ; — often 


SARTOR  RESARTUS, 


239 


have  I  turned  into  their  Old-Clothes  Market  to  worship. 
With  awe-struck  heart  I  walk  through  that  Monmouth 
Street,  with  its  empty  Suits,  as  through  a  Sanhedrim  of 
stainless  Ghosts.  Silent  are  they,  but  expressive  in 
their  silence  :  the  past  witnesses  and  instruments  of 
Woe  and  Joy,  of  Passions,  Virtues,  Crimes,  and  all  the 
fathomless  tumult  of  Good  and  Evil  in  'the  Prison 
men  call  Life/  Friends!  trust  not  the  heart  of  that 
man  for  whom  Old  Clothes  are  not  venerable.  Watch, 
too,  with  reverence,  that  bearded  Jewish  High-priest, 
who  with  hoarse  voice,  like  some  Angel  of  Doom,  sum- 
mons them  from  the  four  winds  !  On  his  head,  like  the 
Pope,  he  has  three  Hats, — a  real  triple  tiara  ;  on  either 
hand  are  the  similitude  of  wings,  whereon  the  sum- 
moned Garments  come  to  alight ;  and  ever  as  he  slowly 
cleaves  the  air,  sounds  forth  his  deep  fateful  note,  as 
if  through  a  trumpet  he  were  proclaiming  :  '  Ghosts 
of  Life,  come  to  Judgment  !  '  Reck  not,  ye  fluttering 
Ghosts  :  he  will  purify  you  in  his  Purgatory,  with  fire 
and  with  water  ;  and,  one  day,  new-created  ye  shall 
reappear.  O,  let  him  in  whom  the  flame  of  Devotion 
is  ready  to  go  out,  who  has  never  worshipped,  and 
knows  not  what  to  worship,  pace  and  repace,  with 
austerest  thought,  the  pavement  of  Monmouth  Street, 
and  say  whether  his  heart  and  his  eyes  still  continue 
dry.  If  Field  Lane,  with  its  long  fluttering  rows  of 
yellow  handkerchiefs,  be  a  Dionysius'  Ear,  where,  in 
stifled  jarring  hubbub,  we  hear  the  Indictment  which 
Poverty  and  Vice  bring  against  lazy  Wealth,  that  it 
has  left  them  there  cast-out  and  trodden  under  foot  of 
Want,  Darkness  and  the  Devil, — then  is  Monmouth 
Street  a  Mirza's  Hill,  where,  in  motley  vision,  the  whole 
Pageant  of  Existence  passes  awfully  before  us  ;  with 
its  wail  and  jubilee,  mad  loves  and  mad  hatreds,  church- 


240  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

bells  and  gallows-ropes,  farce-tragedy,  beast-godhood, 
— the  Bedlam  of  creation  !  " 

To  most  men,  as  it  does  to  ourselves,  all  this  will 
seem  overcharged,  We  too  have  walked  through  Mon- 
mouth  Street;  but  with  little  feeling  of  "Devotion:" 
probably  in  part  because  the  contemplative  process  is 
so  fatally  broken  in  upon  by  the  brood  of  money- 
changers who  nestle  in  that  Church,  and  importune  the 
worshipper  with  merely  secular  proposals.  Whereas 
Teufelsdrockh  might  be  in  that  happy  middle  state, 
which  leaves  to  the  Clothes-broker  no  hope  either  of 
sale  or  of  purchase,  and  so  be  allowed  to  linger  there 
without  molestation. — Something  we  would  have  given 
to  see  the  little  philosophical  figure,  with  its  steeple- 
hat  and  loose  flowing  skirts,  and  eyes  in  a  fine  frenzy, 
"pacing  and  repacing  in  austerest  thought  "  that  fool- 
ish Street ;  which  to  him  was  a  true  Delphic  avenue,  and 
supernatural  Whispering-gallery,  where  the  "Ghosts  of 
Life  "  rounded  strange  secrets  in  his  ear.  O  thou  phil- 
osophic Teufelsdrockh,  that  listenest  while  others  only 
gabble,  and  with  thy  quick  tympanum  hearest  the  grass 
grow  ! 

At  the  same  time,  is  it  not  strange  that,  in  Paper-bag 
Documents  destined  for  an  English  work,  there  exists 
nothing  like  an  authentic  diary  of  this  his  sojourn  in 
London  ;  and  of  his  Meditations  among  the  Clothes- 
shops  only  the  obscurest  emblematic  shadows  ?  Neither, 
in  conversation  (for,  indeed,  he  was  not  a  man  to  pes- 
ter you  with  his  Travels),  have  we  heard  him  more 
than  allude  to  the  subject. 

For  the  rest,  however,  it  cannot  be  uninteresting  that 
we  here  find  how  early  the  significance  of  Clothes  had 
dawned  on  the  now  so  distinguished  Clothes-Professor. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  241 

Might  we  but  fancy  it  to  have  been  even  in  Monmouth 
Street,  at  the  bottom  of  our  own  English  "ink-sea," 
that  this  remarkable  Volume  first  took  being,  and  shot 
forth  its  salient  point  in  his  soul, — as  in  Chaos  did  the 
Egg  of  Eros,  one  day  to  be  hatched  into  a  Universe  ! 
16 


242  SAXTOK  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

ORGANIC     FILAMENTS. 

FOR  us,  who  happen  to  live  while  the  World-Phoenix 
is  burning  herself,  and  burning  so  slowly  that,  as  Teu- 
felsdrockh  calculates,  it  were  a  handsome  bargain  would 
she  engage  to  have  done  "within  two  centuries,  "there 
seems  to  lie  but  an  ashy  prospect.  Not  altogether  so, 
however,  does  the  Professor  figure  it.  "  In  the  living 
subject,  "say  she,  "  change  is  wont  to  be  gradual :  thus, 
while  the  serpent  sheds  its  old  skin,  the  new  is  already 
formed  beneath.  Little  knowest  thou  of  the  burning 
of  a  World-Phcenix,  who  fanciest  that  she  must  first 
burn-out,  and  lie  as  a  dead  cinereous  heap  ;  and  there- 
from the  young  one  start-up  by  miracle,  and  fly  heaven- 
ward. Far  otherwise  !  In  that  Fire- whirlwind,  Creation 
and  Destruction  proceed  together ;  ever  as  the  ashes  of 
the  Old  are  blown  about,  do  organic  filaments  of  the 
New  mysteriously  spin  themselves  :  and  amid  the 
rushing  and  the  waving  of  the  Whirlwind-element  come 
tones  of  a  melodious  Deathsong,  which  end  not  but  in 
tones  of  a  more  melodious  Birthsong.  Nay,  look  into 
the  Fire- whirl  wind  with  thy  own  eyes,  and  thou  wilt 
see. "  Let  us  actually  look,  then  :  to  poor  individuals, 
who  cannot  expect  to  live  two  centuries,  those  same 
organic  filaments,  mysteriously  spinning  themselves, 
will  be  the  best  part  of  the  spectacle.  First,  therefore, 
this  of  Mankind  in  general : 

"In  vajn  thou  deniest  it, "  says  the   Professor;  thou 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


243 


art  my  Brother.  Thy  very  Hatred,  thy  very  Envy, 
those  foolish  Lies  thou  tellest  of  me  in  thy  splenetic 
humor:  what  is  all  this  but  an  inverted  Sympathy? 
Were  I  a  Steam-engine,  wouldst  thou  take  the  trouble 
to  tell  lies  of  me  ?  Not  thou  !  I  should  grind  all  un- 
heeded, whether  badly  or  well. 

"Wondrous  truly  are  the  bonds  that  unite  us  one 
and  all ;  whether  by  the  soft  binding  of  Love,  or  the 
iron  chaining  of  Necessity,  as  we  like  to  choose  it 
More  than  once  have  I  said  to  myself,  of  some  perhaps 
whimsically  strutting  Figure,  such  as  provokes  whim- 
sical thoughts  :  '  Wert  thou,  my  little  Brotherkin,  sud- 
denly covered-up  within  the  largest  imaginable  Glass- 
bell, — what  a  thing  it  were,  not  for  thyself  only, 
but  for  the  world  !  Post  Letters,  more  or  fewer,  from 
all  the  four  winds,  impinge  against  thy  Glass  walls, 
but  have  to  drop  unread  :  neither  from  within  comes 
there  question  or  response  into  any  Postbag ;  thy 
Thoughts  fall  into  no  friendly  ear  or  heart,  thy  Man- 
ufacture into  no  purchasing  hand  :  thou  art  no  longer 
a  circulating  venous-arterial  Heart,  that,  taking  and 
giving,  circulatest  through  all  Space  and  all  Time : 
there  has  a  Hole  fallen-out  in  the  immeasurable,  univer- 
sal World-tissue,  which  must  be  darned  up  again  ! " 

"  Such  venous-arterial  circulation,  of  Letters,  verbal 
Messages,  paper  and  other  Packages,  going  out  from 
him  and  coming  in,  are  a  blood-circulation,  visible  to 
the  eye  :  but  the  finer  nervous-circulation,  by  which 
all  things,  the  minutest  that  he  does,  minutely  influence 
all  men,  and  the  very  look  of  his  face  blesses  or  curses 
whomso  it  lights  on,  and  so  generates  ever  new  bless- 
ing or  new  cursing  :  all  this  you  cannot  see,  but  only 
imagine.  I  say,  there  is  not  a  red  Indian,  hunting  by 
Lake  Winnipic,  can  quarrel  with  his  squaw,  but  the 


244  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

whole  world  must  smart  for  it :  will  not  the  price  of 
beaver  rise  ?  It  is  a  mathematical  fact  that  the  casting 
of  this  pebble  from  my  hand  alters  the  center  of  gravity 
of  the  Universe. 

"If  now  an  existing  generation  of  men  stand  so 
woven  together,  not  less  indissolubly  does  gener- 
ation with  generation.  Hast  thou  ever  meditated  on 
that  word,  Tradition  :  how  we  inherit  not  Life  only,  but 
all  the  garniture  and  form  of  Life  ;  and  work,  and  speak, 
and  even  think  and  feel,  as  our  Fathers,  and  primeval 
grandfathers,  from  the  beginning,  have  given  it  us  ? — • 
Who  printed  thee,  for  example,  this  unpretending  Vol- 
ume on  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ?  Not  the  Herren 
Stillschweigen  and  Company  ;  but  Cadmus  of  Thebes, 
Faust  of  Mentz,  and  innumerable  others  whom  thou 
knowest  not.  Had  there  been  no  Moesogothic  Ulfila, 
there  had  been  no  English  Shakspeare,  or  a  different 
one.  Simpleton!  it  was  Tubal-cain  that  made  thy  very 
Tailor's  needle,  and  sewed  that  court-suit  of  thine. 

"Yes,  truly,  if  Nature  is  one,  and  a  living  indivisible 
whole,  much  more  is  Mankind,  the  Image  that  reflects 
and  creates  Nature,  without  which  Nature  were  not 
As  palpable  life-streams  in  that  wondrous  Individual 
Mankind,  among  so  many  life-streams  that  are  not  pal- 
pable, flow  on  those  main-currents  of  what  we  call 
Opinion  ;  as  preserved  in  Institutions,  Polities,  Churches, 
above  all  in  Books.  Beautiful  it  is  to  understand  and 
know  that  a  Thought  did  never  yet  die  ;  that  as  thou, 
the  originator  thereof,  hast  gathered  it  and  created  it 
from  the  whole  Past,  so  thou  wilt  transmit  it  to  the 
whole  Future.  It  is  thus  that  the  heroic  heart,  the  see- 
ing eye  of  the  first  times,  still  feels  and  sees  in  us  of 
the  latest ;  that  the  Wise  Man  stands  ever  encompassed, 
and  spiritually  embraced,  by  a  cloud  of  witnesses  and 


XESARTUS.  245 

brothers ;  and  there  is  a  living,  literal  Communion  of 
Saints,  wide  as  the  World  itself,  and  as  the  History  of 
the  World. 

"Noteworthy  also,  and  serviceable  for  the  progress  of 
this  same  Individual,  wilt  thou  find  his  subdivision  into 
Generations.  Generations  are  as  the  Days  of  toilsome 
Mankind  ;  Death  and  Birth  are  the  vesper  and  the  matin 
bells  that  summon  Mankind  to  sleep,  and  to  rise  re- 
freshed for  new  advancement.  What  the  Father  has 
made,  the  Son  can  make  and  enjoy  ;  but  has  also  work 
of  his  own  appointed  him.  Thus  all  things  wax,  and 
roll  onwards  ;  Arts,  Establishments,  Opinions,  nothing 
is  completed,  but  ever  completing.  Newton  has 
learned  to  see  what  Kepler  saw  ;  but  there  is  also  a 
fresh  heaven-derived  force  in  Newton  ;  he  must  mount 
to  still  higher  points  of  vision.  So  too  the  Hebrew 
Lawgiver  is,  in  due  time,  folio  wed  by  an  Apostle  of  the 
Gentiles.  In  the  business  of  Destruction,  as  this  also 
is  from  time  to  time  a  necessary  work,  thou  findest  a 
like  sequence  and  perseverance  :  for  Luther  it  was  as 
yet  hot  enough  to  stand  by  that  burning  of  the  Pope's 
Bull ;  Voltaire  could  not  warm  himself  at  the  glimmer- 
ing ashes,  but  required  quite  other  fuel.  Thus  likewise, 
I  note,  the  English  Whig  has,  in  the  second  generation, 
become  an  English  Radical ;  who,  in  the  third  again, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  become  an  English  Rebuilder. 
Find  Mankind  where  thou  wilt,  thou  findest  it  in  living 
movement,  in  progress  faster  or  slower  :  the  Phoenix 
soars  aloft,  hovers  with  outstretched  wings,  filling 
Earth  with  her  music  ;  or,  as  now,  she  sinks,  and  with 
spheral  swan-song  immolates  herself  in  flame,  that  she 
may  soar  the  higher  and  sing  the  clearer." 

Let  the  friends  of  social  order,  in  such  a  disastrous 
period,  lay  this  to  heart,  and  derive  from  it  any  little 


246  SARTOk  RESARTUS. 

comfort  they  can.  We  subjoin  another  passage,  con- 
cerning Titles : 

"  Remark,  not  without  surprise,"  says  Teufelsdrockh, 
"how  all  high  Titles  of  Honor  come  hitherto  from 
Fighting.  Your  Herzog  (Duke,  Dux)  is  Leader  of 
Armies  ;  your  Earl  (fart)  is  Strong  Man  ;  your  Marshal 
cavalry  Horse-shoer.  A  Millennium,  or  reign  of  Peace 
and  Wisdom,  having  from  of  old  been  prophesied,  and 
becoming  now  daily  more  and  more  indubitable,  may 
it  not  be  apprehended  that  such  Fighting-titles  will 
cease  to  be  palatable,  and  new  and  higher  need  to  be 
devised  ? 

"The  only  Title  wherein  I,  with  confidence,  trace 
eternity,  is  that  of  King.  Konig  (King),  anciently 
Kdnning,  means  Ken-ning  (Cunning),  or  whi^h  is  the 
same  thing,  Can.-ning.  Ever  must  the  Sovereign  of 
Man-kind  be  fitly  entitled  King." 

"Well,  also,"  says  he  elsewhere,  "  was  it  written  by 
Theologians  :  a  King  rules  by  divine  right.  He  carries 
in  him  an  authority  from  God,  or  man  will  never  give 
it  him.  Can  I  choose  my  own  King  ?  I  can  choose 
my  own  King  Popinjay,  and  play  what  farce  or  tragedy 
I  may  with  him  :  but  he  who  is  to  be  my  Ruler,  whose 
will  is  to  be  higher  than  my  will,  was  chosen  for  me  in 
Heaven.  Neither  except  in  such  Obedience  to  the 
Heaven-chosen  is  Freedom  so  much  as  conceivable." 

The  Editor  will  here  admit  that,  among  all  the  won- 
drous provinces  of  Teufelsdrockh's  spiritual  world, 
there  is  none  he  walks  in  with  such  astonishment,  hesi- 
tation, and  even  pain,  as  in  the  Political.  How,  with 
our  English  love  of  Ministry  and  Opposition,  and  that 
generous  conflict  of  Parties,  mind  warming  itself  against 
mind  in  their  mutual  wrestle  for  the  Public  Good,  by 


SAX  TOR 


247 


which  wrestle,  indeed,  is  our  invaluable  Constitution 
kept  w.arm  and  alive  ;  how  shall  we  domesticate  our- 
selves in  this  spectral  Necropolis,  or  rather  City  both 
of  the  Dead  and  of  the  Unborn,  where  the  Present 
seems  little  other  than  an  inconsiderable  Film  dividing 
the  Past  and  the  Future  ?  In  those  dim  longdrawn  ex- 
panses, all  is  so  immeasurable ;  much  so  disastrous, 
ghastly ;  your  very  radiances  and  straggling  light- 
beams  have  a  supernatural  character.  And  then  with 
such  an  indifference,  such  a  prophetic  peacefulness 
(accounting  the  inevitably  coming  as  already  here,  to 
him  all  one  whether  it  be  distant  by  centuries  or  only 
by  days),  does  he  sit ; — and  live,  you  would  say,  rather 
in  any  other  age  than  in  his  own  !  It  is  our  painful 
duty  to  announce,  or  repeat,  that,  looking  into  this 
man,  we  discern  a  deep,  silent,  slow-burning,  inextin-, 
guishable  Radicalism,  such  as  fills  us  with  shuddering 
admiration. 

Thus,  for  example,  he  appears  to  make  little  even  of 
the  Elective  Franchise ;  at  least  so  we  interpret  the 
following:  "Satisfy  yourselves,"  he  says,  "by  uni- 
versal, indubitable  experiment,  even  as  ye  are  now 
doing  or  will  do,  whether  FREEDOM,  heaven-born  and 
leading  heavenward,  and  so  vitally  essential  for  us  all, 
cannot  peradventure  be  mechanically  hatched  and 
brought  to  light  in  that  same  Ballot-Box  of  yours  ;  or  at 
worst,  in  some  other  discoverable  or  devisable  Box, 
Edifice,  or  Steam-mechanism.  It  were  a  mighty  con- 
venience ;  and  beyond  all  feats  of  manufacture  wit- 
nessed hitherto."  Is  Teufelsdrockh  acquainted  with 
the  British  Constitution,  even  slightly  ? — He  says,  under 
another  figure  :  ' '  But  after  all,  were  the  problem,  as 
indeed  it  now  everywhere  is,  To  rebuild  your  old 
House  from  the  top  downwards  (since  you  must  live  in 


248  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

it  the  while),  what  better,  what  other,  than  the  Repre- 
sentative Machine  will  serve  your  turn  ?  Meanwhile, 
however,  mock  me  not  with  the  name  of  Free,  '  when 
you  have  but  knit-up  my  chains  into  ornamental  fes- 
toons.' " — Or  what  will  any  member  of  the  Peace  Soci- 
ety make  of  such  an  assertion  as  this  :  "The  lower 
people  everywhere  desire  War.  Not  so  unwisely ; 
there  is  then  a  demand  for  lower  people — to  be  shot  !  " 

Gladly,  therefore,  do  we  emerge  from  those  soul- 
confusing  labyrinths  of  speculative  Radicalism,  into 
somewhat  clearer  regions.  Here,  looking  round,  as 
was  our  hest,  for  "organic  filaments,"  we  ask,  may 
not  this,  touching  "Hero-worship,"  be  of  the  number? 
It  seems  of  a  cheerful  character  ;  yet  so  quaint,  so 
mystical,  one  knows  not  what,  or  how  little,  may  lie 
( under  it.  Our  readers  shall  look  with  their  own  eyes  : 

"True  is  it  that,  in  these  days,  man  can  do  almost 
all  things,  only  not  obey.  True  likewise  that  whoso 
cannot  obey  cannot  be  free,  still  less  bear  rule  ;  he 
that  is  the  inferior  of  nothing,  can  be  the  superior  of 
nothing,  the  equal  of  nothing.  Nevertheless,  believe 
not  that  man  has  lost  his  faculty  of  Reverence  ;  that  if 
it  slumber  in  him  it  has  gone  dead.  Painful  for  man 
is  that  same  rebellious  Independence,  when  it  has 
become  inevitable  ;  only  in  loving  companionship 
with  his  fellows  does  he  feel  safe ;  only  in  reverently 
bowing  down  before  the  Higher  does  he  feel  himself 
exalted. 

"Or  what  if  the  character  of  our  so  troublous  Era  lay 
even  in  this  :  that  man  had  forever  cast  away  Fear, 
which  is  the  lower ;  but  not  yet  risen  into  perennial 
Reverence,  which  is  the  higher  and  highest? 

"Meanwhile,  observe  with  joy,  so  cunningly  has 
Nature  ordered  it,  that  whatsoever  man  ought  to  obey, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  249 

he  'cannot  but  obey.  Before  no  faintest  revelation  of 
the  Godlike  did  he  ever  stand  irreverent ;  least  of  all, 
when  the  Godlike  showed  itself  revealed  in  his  fellow- 
man.  Thus  is  there  a  true  religious  Loyalty  forever 
rooted  in  his  heart ;  nay,  in  all  ages,  even  in  ours,  it  man- 
ifests itself  as  a  more  or  less  orthodox  Hero-worship. 
In  which  fact,  that  Hero-worship  exists,  has  existed, 
and  will  forever  exist,  universally  among  Mankind, 
mayest  thou  discern  the  corner-stone  of  living-rock, 
whereon  all  Polities  for  the  remotest  time  may  stand 
secure. " 

Do  our  readers  discern  any  such  corner-stone,  or 
even  so  much  as  what  Teufelsdrockh  is  looking  at  ? 
He  exclaims, ' '  Or  hast  thou  forgotten  Paris  and  Voltaire  ? 
How  the  aged,  withered  man,  though  but  a  Sceptic, ' 
Mocker,  and  millinery  Court-poet,  yet  because  even 
he  seemed  the  Wisest,  Best,  could  drag  mankind  at  his 
chariot-wheels,  so  that  princes  coveted  a  smile  from 
him,  and  the  loveliest  of  France  would  have  laid  their 
hair  beneath  his  feet !  All  Paris  was  one  vast  Temple 
of  Hero-worship ;  though  their  Divinity,  moreover, 
was  of  feature  too  apish. 

"But  if  such  things,"  continues  he,  "were  done  in 
the  dry  tree,  what  will  be  done  in  the  green  ?  If,  in  the 
most  parched  season  of  Man's  History,  in  the  most 
parched  spot  of  Europe,  when  Parisian  life  was  at  best 
but  a  scientific  Hortus  Stccus,  bedizened  with  some 
Italian  Gumflowers,  such  virtue  could  come  out  of  it  ; 
what  is  to  be  looked  for  when  Life  again  waves  leafy 
and  bloomy,  and  your  Hero-Divinity  shall  have  nothing 
apelike,  but  be  wholly  human  ?  Know  that  there  is  in 
man  a  quite  indestructible  Reverence  for  whatsoever 
holds  of  Heaven,  or  even  plausibly  counterfeits  such 
holding.  Show  the  dullest  clodpole,  show  the  haugh- 


250  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

tiest  featherhead,  that  a  soul  higher  than  himself  is 
actually  here ;  were  his  knees  stiffened  into  brass,  he 
must  down  and  worship." 

Organic  filaments,  of  a  more  authentic  sort,  mys- 
teriously spinning  themselves,  some  will  perhaps  dis- 
cover in  the  following  passage  : 

"There  is  no  Church,  sayest  thou  ?  The  voice  of 
Prophecy  has  gone  dumb  ?  This  is  even  what  I  dis- 
pute :  but  in  any  case,  hast  thou  not  still  Preaching 
enough  ?  A  Preaching  Friar  settles  himself  in  every 
village  ;  and  builds  a  pulpit,  which  he  calls  Newspaper. 
Therefrom  he  preaches  what  most  momentous  doctrine 
is  in  him,  for  man's  salvation  ;  and  dost  not  thou  listen, 
and  believe  ?  Look  well,  thou  s°est  everywhere  a  new 
Clergy  of  the  Mendicant  Orders,  some  bare-footed, 
some  almost  bare-backed,  fashion  itself  into  shape,  and 
teach  and  preach,  zealously  enough,  for  copper  alms 
and  the  love  of  God.  These  break  in  pieces  the  ancient 
idols  ;  and,  though  themselves  too  often  reprobate,  as 
idol-breakers  are  wont  to  be,  mark  out  the  sites  of  new 
Churches,  where  the  true  God-ordained,  that  are  to 
follow,  may  find  audience,  and  minister.  Said  I  not, 
Before  the  old  skin  was  shed,  the  new  had  formed  itself 
beneath  it  ? " 

Perhaps  also  in  the  following  ;  wherewith  we  now 
hasten  to  knit-up  this  ravelled  sleeve  : 

' '  But  there  is  no  Religion  ?  "  reiterates  the  Profes- 
sor. "Fool  !  I  tell  thee,  there  is.  Hast  thou  well 
considered  all  that  lies  in  this  immeasurable  froth- 
ocean  we  name  LITERATURE?  Fragments  of  a  genuine 
Church-ffomitetic  lie  scattered  there,  which  Time  will 
assort :  nay,  fractions  even  of  a  Liturgy  could  I  point 
out.  And  knowest  thou  no  Prophet,  even  in  the  vest- 
ure, environment,  and  dialect  of  this  age  ?  None  to 


SA  K  TOR  RES  A  R  TUS. 


251 


whom  the  Godlike  had  revealed  itself,  through  all 
meanest  and  highest  forms  of  the  Common  ;  and  by 
him  been  again  prophetically  revealed  :  in  whose  in- 
spired melody,  even  in  these  rag-gathering  and  rag- 
burning  days,  Man's  Life  again  begins,  were  it  but 
afar  off,  to  be  divine?  Knowest  thou  nonesuch?  I 
know  him,  and  name  him — Goethe. 

"  But  thou  as  yet  standest  in  no  Temple  ;  joinest  in 
no  Psalm-worship  :  feelest  well  that,  where  there  is  no 
ministering  Priest,  the  people  perish  ?  Be  of  comfort ! 
Thou  art  not  alone,  if  thou  have  Faith.  Spake  we  not 
of  a  Communion  of  Saints,  unseen,  yet  not  unreal, 
accompanying  and  brother-like  embracing  thee,  so 
thou  be  worthy  ?  Their  heroic  Sufferings  rise  up  me- 
lodiously together  to  Heaven,  out  of  all  lands,  and  out 
of  all  times,  as  a  sacred  Miserere  ;  their  heroic  Actions 
also,  as  a  boundless  everlasting  Psalm  of  Triumph. 
Neither  say  that  thou  hast  now  no  Symbol  of  the  God- 
like. Is  not  God's  Universe  a  Symbol  of  the  Godlike  ; 
is  not  Immensity  a  Temple  ;  is  not  Man's  History,  and 
Men's  History,  a  perpetual  Evangel  ?  Listen,  and  for 
organ-music  thou  wilt  ever,  as  of  old,  hear  the  Morning 
Stars  sing  together." 


252 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

NATURAL  SUPERNATURALISM. 

IT  is  in  his  stupendous  Section,  headed  Natural  Super- 
naturalism^  that  the  Professor  first  becomes  a  Seer; 
and,  after  long  effort,  such  as  we  have  witnessed, 
finally  subdues  under  his  feet  this  refractory  Clothes- 
Philosophy,  and  takes  victorious  possession  thereof. 
Phantasms  enough  he  has  had  to  struggle  with  ; 
"Cloth- webs  and  Cob-webs,"  of  Imperial  Mantles, 
Superannuated  Symbols,  and  what  not  :  yet  still  did  he 
courageously  pierce  through.  Nay,  worst  of  all,  two 
quite  mysterious,  world-embracing  Phantasms,  TIME 
and  SPACE,  have  ever  hovered  round  him,  perplexing 
and  bewildering :  but  with  these  also  he  now  resolutely 
grapples,  these  also  he  victoriously  rends  asunder.  In 
a  word,  he  has  looked  fixedly  on  Existence,  till,  one 
after  the  other,  its  earthly  hulls  and  garnitures  have  all 
melted  away  ;  and  now,  to  his  rapt  vision,  the  interior 
celestial  Holy  of  Holies  lies  disclosed. 

Here,  therefore,  properly  it  is  that  the  Philosophy  of 
Clothes  attains  to  Transcendentalism  ;  this  last  leap, 
can  we  but  clear  it,  takes  us  safe  into  the  promised 
land,  where  Palingenesia,  in  all  senses,  may  be  con- 
sidered as  beginning.  "Courage,  then!"  may  our 
Diogenes  exclaim,  with  better  right  than  Diogenes  the 
First  once  did.  This  stupendous  Section  we,  after  long 
painful  meditation,  have  found  not  to  be  unintelligible  ; 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


253 


but,  on  the  contrary,  to  grow  clear,  nay  radiant,  and 
all-illuminating.  Let  the  reader,  turning  on  it  what 
utmost  force  of  speculative  intellect  is  in  him,  do  his 
part ;  as  we,  by  judicious  selection  and  adjustment, 
shall  study  to  do  ours  : 

"  Deep  has  been,  and  is,  the  significance  of  Mira- 
cles," thus  quietly  begins  the  Professor;  "far  deeper 
perhaps  than  we  imagine.  Meanwhile,  the  question 
of  questions  were  :  What  specially  is  a  Miracle  ?  To 
that  Dutch  King  of  Siam,  an  icicle  had  been  a  miracle  ; 
whoso  had  carried  with  him  an  air-pump,  and  vial  of 
vitriolic  ether,  might  have  worked  a  miracle.  To  my 
Horse,  again,  who  unhappily  is  still  more  unscientific, 
do  not  I  work  a  miracle,  and  magical  'Open  sesame!' 
every  time  I  please  to  pay  two-pence,  and  open  for  him 
an  impassable  Schlagbaum,  or  shut  Turnpike  ? 

"  '  But  is  not  a  real  Miracle  simply  a  violation  of  the 
Laws  of  Nature  ? '  ask  several.  Whom  I  answer  by 
this  new  question  :  What  are  the  Laws  of  Nature  ?  To 
me  perhaps  the  rising  of  one  from  the  dead  were  no 
violation  of  these  Laws,  but  a  confirmation  ;  were 
some  far  deeper  Law,  now  first  penetrated  into,  and  by 
Spiritual  Force,  even  as  the  rest  have  all  been,  brought 
to  bear  on  us  with  its  Material  Force. 

"  Here  too  may  some  inquire,  not  without  aston- 
ishment :  On  what  ground  shall  one,  that  can  make 
Iron  swim,  come  and  declare  that  therefore  he  can 
teach  Religion  ?  To  us,  truly,  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  such  declaration  were  inept  enough ;  which 
nevertheless  to  our  fathers,  of  the  First  Century,  was 
full  of  meaning. 

' '  '  But  is  it  not  the  deepest  Law  of  Nature  that  she 
be  constant  ? '  cries  an  illuminated  class  :  '  Is  not  the 
Machine  of  the  Universe  fixed  to  move  by  unalterable 


254  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

rules  ?  Probable  enough,  good  friends  :  nay  I,  too, 
must  believe  that  the  God,  whom  ancient  inspired  men 
assert  to  be  '  without  variableness  or  shadow  of  turn- 
ing,' does  indeed  never  change  ;  that  Nature,  that  the 
Universe,  which  no  one  whom  it  so  pleases  can  be 
prevented  from  calling  a  Machine,  does  move  by  the 
most  unalterable  rules.  And  now  of  you,  too,  I  make 
the  old  inquiry  :  What  those  same  unalterable  rules, 
forming  the  complete  Statute-Book  of  Nature,  may 
possibly  be  ? 

"They  stand  written  in  our  Works  of  Science,  say 
you  ;  in  the  accumulated  records  of  Man's  Experience? 
— Was  Man  with  his  Experience  present  at  the  Creation, 
then,  to  see  how  it  all  went  on  ?  Have  any  deepest 
scientific  individuals  yet  dived  down  to  the  foundations 
of  the  Universe,  and  gauged  everything  there  ?  Did 
the  Maker  take  them  into  His  counsel ;  that  they  read 
His  groundplan  of  the  incomprehensible  All ;  and  can 
say,  This  stands  marked  therein,  and  no  more  than 
this  ?  Alas,  not  in  anywise  !  These  scientific  individ- 
uals have  been  nowhere  but  where  we  also  are  ;  have 
seen  some  handbreadths  deeper  than  we  see  into  the 
Deep  that  is  infinite,  without  bottom  as  without  shore. 

"Laplace's  Book  on  the  Stars,  wherein  he  exhibits 
that  certain  Planets,  with  their  Satelites,  gyrate  round 
our  worthy  Sun,  at  a  rate  and  in  a  course,  which,  by 
greatest  good  fortune,  he  and  the  like  of  him  have 
succeeded  in  detecting, — is  to  me  as  precious  as  to 
another.  But  is  this  what  thou  namest  '  Mechanism 
of  the  Heavens,'  and  'System  of  the  World;'  this, 
wherein  Sirius  and  the  Pleiades,  and  all  Herschel's 
Fifteen-thousand  Suns  per  minute,  being  left  out,  some 
paltry  handful  of  Moons,  and  inert  Balls,  had  been — 
looked  at,  nicknamed,  and  marked  in  the  Zodiacal 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


255 


Way-bill ;  so  that  we  can  now  prate  of  their  Where- 
about ;  their  How,  their  Why,  their  What,  being  hid 
from  us,  as  in  the  signless  Inane  ? 

"System  of  Nature  !  To  the  wisest  man,  wide  as 
is  his  vision,  Nature  remains  of  quite  infinite  depth,  of 
quite  infinite  expansion  ;  and  all  Experience  thereof 
limits  itself  to  some  few  computed  centuries  and  meas- 
ured square-miles.  The  course  of  Nature's  phases,  on 
this  our  little  fraction  of  a  Planet,  is  partially  known 
to  us  :  but  who  knows  what  deeper  courses  these  de- 
pend on ;  what  infinitely  larger  Cycle  (of  causes)  our 
little  Epicycle  revolves  on  ?  To  the  Minnow  every 
cranny  and  pebble,  and  quality  and  accident,  of  its 
little  native  Creek  may  have  become  familiar  :  but  does 
the  Minnow  understand  the  Ocean  Tides  and  periodic 
Currents,  the  Trade-winds,  and  Monsoons,  and  Moon's 
Eclipses  ;  by  all  which  the  condition  of  its  little  Creek 
is  regulated,  and  may,  from  time  to  time  (unmiracu- 
lously  enough),  be  quite  overset  and  reversed  ?  Such  a 
minnow  is  Man ;  his  Creek  this  Planet  Earth ;  his 
Ocean  the  immeasurable  All ;  his  Monsoons  and  peri- 
odic Currents  the  mysterious  Course  of  Providence 
through  ^ons  of  ^ons. 

"We  speak  of  the  Volume  of  Nature  :  and  truly  a 
Volume  it  is, — whose  Author  and  Writer  is  God.  To 
read  it !  Dost  thou,  does  man,  so  much  as  well  know 
the  Alphabet  thereof?  With  its  Words,  Sentences,  and 
grand  descriptive  Pages,  poetical  and  philosophical, 
spread  out  through  Solar  Systems,  and  Thousand  of 
Years,  we  shall  not  try  thee.  It  is  a  Volume  written 
in  celestial  hieroglyphs,  in  the  true  Sacred-writing ;  of 
which  even  Prophets  are  happy  that  they  can  read 
here  a  line  and  there  a  line.  As  for  your  Institutes, 
and  Academies  of  Science,  they  strive  bravely ;  and, 


256  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

from  amid  the  thick-crowded,  inextricably  intertwisted 
hieroglyphic  writing,  pick  out,  by  dextrous  combination, 
some  Letters  in  the  vulgar  Character,  and  therefrom 
put  together  this  and  the  other  economic  Recipe,  of 
high  avail  in  Practice.  That  Nature  is  more  than  some 
boundless  Volume  of  such  Recipes,  or  huge,  well-nigh 
inexhaustible  Domestic-Cookery  Book,  of  which  the 
whole  secret  will  in  this  manner  one  day  evolve  itself, 
the  fewest  dream. 

"  Custom,"  continues  the  Professor,  "  doth  make 
dotards  of  us  all.  Consider  well,  thou  wilt  find  that 
Custom  is  the  greatest  of  Weavers  ;  and  weaves  air- 
raiment  for  all  the  Spirits  of  the  Universe ;  whereby, 
indeed,  these  dwell  with  us  visibly,  as  ministering 
servants,  in  our  houses  and  workshops ;  but  their 
spiritual  nature  becomes,  to  the  most,  forever  hidden. 
Philosophy  complains  that  Custom  has  hoodwinked  us 
from  the  first ;  that  we  do  everything  by  Custom,  even 
Believe  by  it ;  that  our  very  Axioms,  let  us  boast  of 
Free-thinking  as  we  may,  are  oftenest  simply  such 
Beliefs  as  we  have  never  heard  questioned.  Nay,  what 
is  Philosophy  throughout  but  a  continual  battle  against 
Custom  ;  an  ever-renewed  effort  to  transcend  the 
sphere  of  blind  Custom,  and  so  become  Transcendental  ? 

' '  Innumerable  are  the  illusions  and  legerdemain-tricks 
of  Custom  :  but  of  all  these,  perhaps  the  cleverest  is 
her  knack  of  persuading  us  that  the  Miraculous,  by 
simple  repetition,  ceases  to  be  Miraculous.  True,  it  is 
by  this  means  we  live ;  for  man  must  work  as  well  as 
wonder  :  and  herein  is  Custom  so  far  a  kind  nurse, 
guiding  him  to  his  true  benefit.  But  she  is  a  fond,  fool- 
ish nurse,  or  rather  we  are  false,  foolish  nurslings, 
when,  in  our  resting  and  reflecting  hours,  we  prolong  the 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  257 

same  deception.  Am  I  to  view  the  Stupendous  with 
stupid  indifference,  because  I  have  seen  it  twice,  or 
two-hundred,  or  two-million  times  ?  There  is  no  reason 
in  Nature  or  in  Art  why  I  should  :  unless,  indeed,  I 
am  a  mere  Work-Machine,  for  whom  the  divine  gift 
of  Thought  were  no  other  than  the  terrestrial  gift  of 
Steam  is  to  the  Steam-engine  ;  a  power  whereby  cotton 
might  be  spun,  and  money  and  money's  worth 
realized. 

"  Notable  enough  too,  here  as  elsewhere,  wilt  thou 
find  the  potency  of  Names  ;  which  indeed  are  but 
one  kind  of  such  custom-woven,  wonder-hiding  Gar- 
ments. Witchcraft,  and  all  manner  of  Spectre-work, 
and  Demonology,  we  have  now  named  Madness,  and 
Diseases  of  the  Nerves.  Seldom  reflecting  that  still  the 
new  question  comes  upon  us  :  What  is  Madness,  what 
are  Nerves  ?  Ever,  as  before,  does  Madness  remain  a 
mysterious-terrific,  altogether  infernal  boiling-up  of  the 
Nether  Chaotic  Deep,  through  this  fair  painted  Vision 
of  Creation,  which  swims  thereon,  which  we  name  the 
Real.  Was  Luther's  Picture  of  the  Devil  less  a  Real- 
ity, whether  it  were  formed  within  the  bodily  eye,  or 
without  it  ?  In  every  the  wisest  Soul  lies  a  whole  world 
of  internal  Madness,  an  authentic  Demon-Empire  ;  out 
of  which,  indeed,  his  world  of  Wisdom  has  been  crea- 
tively built  together,  and  now  rests  there,  as  on  its 
dark  foundations  does  a  habitable  flowery  Earth-rind. 

"But  deepest  of  all  illusory  Appearances,  for  hiding 
Wonder,  as  for  many  other  ends,  are  your  two  grand 
fundamental  world-enveloping  Appearances,  SPACE  and 
TIME.  These,  as  spun  and  woven  for  us  from  before 
Birth  itself,  to  clothe  our  Celestial  ME  for  dwelling  here, 
and  yet  to  blind  it, — lie  all-embracing,  as  the  universal 


258  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

canvas,  or  warp  and  woof,  whereby  all  minor  Illusions, 
in  this  Phantasm  Existence,  weave  and  paint  them- 
selves. In  vain,  while  here  on  Earth,  shall  you  en- 
deavor to  strip  them  off;  you  can,  at  best,  but  rend 
them  asunder  for  moments,  and  look  through. 

"  Fortunatus  had  a  wishing  Hat,  which  when  he  put 
on,  and  wished  himself  Anywhere,  behold  he  was 
There.  By  this  means  had  Fortunatus  triumphed  over 
Space,  he  had  annihilated  Space;  for  him  there  was  no 
Where,  but  all  was  Here.  Were  a  Hatter  to  establish 
himself,  in  the  Wahngasse  of  Weissnichtwo,  and  make 
felts  of  this  sort  for  all  mankind,  what  a  world  we 
should  have  of  it !  Still  stranger,  should,  on  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  street,  another  Hatter  establish  himself; 
and,  as  his  fellow-craftsman  made  Space-annihilating 
Hats,  make  Time-annihilating  !  Of  both  would  I  pur- 
chase, were  it  with  my  last  groschen ;  but  chiefly  of 
this  latter.  To  clap-on  your  felt,  and,  simply  by  wish- 
ing that  you  were  Anywhere,  straightway  to  be  TJiere! 
Next  to  clap-on  your  other  felt,  and,  simply  by  wishing 
that  you  were  Anyzvhen,  straightway  to  be  Then!  This 
were  indeed  the  grander  :  shooting  at  will  from  the 
Fire-Creation  of  the  World  to  its  Fire-Consummation; 
here  historically  present  in  the  First  Century,  convers- 
ing face  to  face  with  Paul  and  Seneca  ;  there  prophetic- 
ally in  the  Thirty-first,  conversing  also  face  to  face 
with  other  Pauls  and  Senecas,  who  as  yet  stand  hidden 
in  the  depth  of  that  late  Time  ! 

"  Orthinkest  thou  it  were  impossible,  unimaginable? 
Is  the  Past  annihilated,  then,  or  only  past ;  is  the 
Future  nonextant,  or  only  future?  Those  mystic  facul- 
ties of  thine,  Memory  and  Hope,  already  answer  :  al- 
ready through  those  mystic  avenues,  thou  the  Earth- 
blinded  summonest  both  Past  and  Future,  and  com- 
munest  with  them,  though  as  yet  darkly,  and  with  mute 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  259 

beckonings.  The  curtains  of  Yesterday  drop  down, 
the  curtains  of  To-morrow  roll  up  ;  but  Yesterday  and 
To-morrow  both  are.  Pierce  through  the  Time-element, 
glance  into  the  Eternal.  Believe  what  thou  findest 
written  in  the  sanctuaries  of  Man's  Soul,  even  as  all 
Thinkers,  in  all  ages,  have  devoutly  read  it  there  :  that 
Time  and  Space  are  not  God,  but  creations  of  God; 
that  with  God  as  it  is  a  universal  HERE,  so  it  is  an  ever- 
lasting Now. 

"  And  seest  thou  therein  any  glimpse  of  IMMORTALITY? 
— O  Heaven  !  Is  the  white  Tomb  of  our  Loved  One, 
who  died  from  our  arms,  and  had  to  be  left  behind  us 
there,  which  rises  in  the  distance,  like  a  pale,  mourn- 
fully receding  Milestone,  to  tell  how  many  toilsome 
uncheered  miles  we  have  journeyed  on  alone, — but  a 
pale  spectral  Illusion  !  Is  the  lost  Friend  still  mysteri- 
ously Here,  even  as  we  are  Here  mysteriously,  with 
God ! — Know  of  a  truth  that  only  the  Time-shadows 
have  perished,  or  are  perishable  ;  that  the  real  Being 
of  whatever  was,  and  whatever  is,  and  whatever  will 
be,  is  even  now  and  forever.  This,  should  it  unhappily 
seem  new,  thou  mayest  ponder  at  thy  leisure  ;  for  the 
next  twenty  years,  or  the  next  twenty  centuries  :  be- 
lieve it  thou  must ;  understand  it  thou  canst  not. 

''That  the  Thought-forms,  Space  and  Time,  where- 
in, once  for  all,  we  are  sent  into  this  Earth  to  live, 
should  condition  and  determine  our  whole  Practical 
reasonings,  conceptions,  and  imagings  or  imaginings, 
seems  altogether  fit,  just,  and  unavoidable.  But  that 
they  should,  furthermore,  usurp  such  sway  over  pure 
spiritual  Meditation,  and  blind  us  to  the  wonder  every- 
where lying  close  on  us,  seems  nowise  so.  Admit 
Space  and  Time  to  their  due  rank  as  Forms  of  Thought; 
nay,  even,  if  thou  wilt,  to  their  quite  undue  rank  of 


260  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

Realities  :  and  consider,  then,  with  thyself  how  their 
thin  disguises  hide  from  us  the  brightest  God-efful- 
gences !  Thus,  were  it  not  miraculous,  could  I  stretch 
forth  my  hand  and  clutch  the  Sun  ?  Yet  thou  seest  me 
daily  stretch  forth  my  hand  and  therewith  clutch  many 
a  thing,  and  swing  it  hither  and  thither.  Art  thou  a 
grown  baby,  then,  to  fancy  that  the  Miracle  lies  in 
miles  of  distance,  or  in  pounds  avoirdupois  of  weight  : 
and  not  to  see  that  the  true  inexplicable  God-revealing 
Miracle  lies  in  this,  that  I  can  stretch  forth  my  hand  at 
all ;  that  I  have  free  Force  to  clutch  aught  therewith  ? 
Innumerable  other  of  this  sort  are  the  deceptions,  and 
wonder-hiding  stupefactions,  which  Space  practises 
on  us. 

"Still  worse  is  it  with  regard  to  Time.  Your  grand 
anti-magician,  and  universal  wonder-hider,  is  this  same 
lying  Time.  Had  we  but  the  Time-annihilating  Hat, 
to  put  on  for  once  only,  we  should  see  ourselves  in  a 
World  of  Miracles,  wherein  all  fabled  or  authentic 
Thaumaturgy,  and  feats  of  Magic,  were  outdone.  But 
unhappily  we  have  not  such  a  Hat ;  and  man,  poor 
fool  that  he  is,  can  seldom  and  scantily  help  himself 
without  one. 

"Were  it  not  wonderful,  for  instance,  had  Orpheus, 
or  Amphion,  built  the  walls  of  Thebes  by  the  mere 
sound  of  his  Lyre  ?  Yet  tell  me,  Who  built  these  walls 
of  Weissnichtwo;  summoning  out  all  the  sandstone 
rocks,  to  dance  along  from  the  Steinbruch  (now  a  huge 
Troglodyte  Chasm,  with  frightful  green-mantled  pools); 
and  shape  themselves  into  Doric  and  Ionic  pillars, 
squared  ashlar  houses  and  noble  streets  ?  Was  it  not 
the  still  higher  Orpheus,  or  Orpheuses,  who,  in  past 
centuries,  by  the  divine  Music  of  Wisdom,  succeeded 
in  civilizing  Man  ?  Our  highest  Orpheus  walked  in 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  26 1 

Judea,  eighteen-hundred  years  ago  :  his  sphere-melody, 
flowing  in  wild  native  tones,  took  captive  the  ravished 
souls  of  men  ;  and,  being  of  a  truth  sphere-melody, 
still  flows  and  sounds,  though  now  with  thousandfold 
accompaniments,  and  rich  symphonies,  through  all  our 
hearts;  and  modulates,  and  divinely  leads  them.  Is 
that  a  wonder,  which  happens  in  two  hours;  and  does 
it  cease  to  be  wonderful  if  happening  in  two  million? 
Not  only  was  Thebes  built  by  the  music  of  an  Orpheus; 
but  without  the  music  of  some  inspired  Orpheus  was  no 
city  ever  built,  no  work  that  man  glories  in  ever  done. 

"  Sweep  away  the  illusion  of  Time  ;  glance,  if  thou 
have  eyes,  from  the  near  moving-cause  to  its  far-dis- 
tant Mover  :  The  stroke  that  came  transmitted  through 
a  whole  galaxy  of  elastic  balls,  was  it  less  a  stroke 
than  if  the  last  ball  only  had  been  struck,  and  sent  fly- 
ing? O,  could  I  (with  the  Time-annihilating  Hat) 
transport  thee  direct  from  the  Beginnings  to  the  End- 
ings, how  were  thy  eyesight  unsealed,  .and  thy  heart 
set  flaming  in  the  Light-sea  of  celestial  wonder  !  Then 
sawest  thou  that  this  fair  Universe,  were  it  in  the 
meanest  province  thereof,  is  in  very  deed  the  star- 
domed  City  of  God  ;  that  through  every  star,  through 
every  grass-blade,  and  most  through  every  Living  Soul, 
the  glory  of  a  present  God  still  beams.  But  Nature, 
which  is  the  Time-vesture  of  God,  and  reveals  Him  to 
the  wise,  hides  Him  from  the  foolish. 

"Again,  could  anything  be  more  miraculous  than  an 
actual  authentic  Ghost  ?  The  English  Johnson  longed, 
all  his  life,  to  see  one  ;  but  could  not,  though  he  went 
to  Cock  Lane,  and  thence  to  the  church-vaults,  and 
tapped  on  coffins.  Foolish  Doctor!  Did  he  never, 
with  the  mind's  eye  as  well  as  with  the  body's,  look 
round  him  into  that  full  tide  of  human  Life  he  so  loved ; 


262  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

did  he  never  so  much  as  look  into  Himself?  The  good 
Doctor  was  a  Ghost,  as  actual  and  authentic  as  heart 
could  wish ;  well-nigh  a  million  of  Ghosts  were  travel- 
ling the  streets  by  his  side.  Once  more  I  say,  sweep 
away  the  illusion  of  Time ;  compress  the  threescore 
years  into  three  minutes  :  what  else  was  he,  what  else 
are  we?  Are  we  not  Spirits,  that  are  shaped  into  a 
body,  into  an  Appearance  ;  and  that  fade  away  again 
into  air  and  Invisibility  ?  This  is  no  metaphor,  it  is  a 
simple  scientific_/ac/  .•  we  start  out  of  Nothingness,  take 
figure,  and  are  Apparitions ;  round  us,  as  round  the 
veriest  spectre,  is  Eternity ;  and  to  Eternity  minutes 
are  as  years  and  aeons.  Come  there  not  tones  of  Love 
and  Faith,  as  from  celestial  harp-strings,  like  the  Song 
of  beatified  Souls  ?  And  again,  do  not  we  squeak  and 
jibber  (in  our  discordant,  screech-owlish  debatings  and 
recriminatings)  ;  and  glide  bodeful,  and  feeble,  and 
fearful ;  or  uproar  (poltern),  and  revel  in  our  mad  Dance 
of  the  Dead, — till  the  scent  of  the  morning  air  sum- 
mons us  to  our  still  Home ;  and  dreamy  Night,  be- 
comes awake  and  Day  ?  Where  now  is  Alexander  of 
Macedon  :  does  the  steel  Host,  that  yelled  in  fierce 
battle-shouts  at  Issus  and  Arbela,  remain  behind  him  ; 
or  have  they  all  vanished  utterly,  even  as  perturbed 
Goblins  must?  Napoleon  too,  and  his  Moscow  Re- 
treats and  Austerlitz  Campaigns?  Was  it  all  other 
than  the  veriest  Spectre-hunt ;  which  has  now,  with  its 
howling  tumult  that  made  Night  hideous,  flitted  away? 
— Ghosts  !  There  are  nigh  a  thousand-million  walking 
the  Earth  openly  at  noontide  ;  some  half-hundred  have 
vanished  from  it,  some  half-hundred  have  arisen  in  it, 
ere  thy  watch  ticks  once. 

"O  Heaven,  it  is  mysterious,  it  is  awful  to  consider 
that  we  only  carry  each  a  future  Ghost  within  him  ;  but 


SARTOR  RZSARTUS.  263 

are,  in  very  deed,  Ghosts  !  These  Limbs,  whence  had 
we  them ;  this  stormy  Force  ;  this  life-blood  with  its 
burning  Passion?  They  are  dust  and  shadow;  a 
Shadow-system  gathered  round  our  ME  ;  wherein, 
through  some  moments  or  years,  the  Divine  Essence 
is  to  be  revealed  in  the  Flesh.  That  warrior  on  his 
strong  war-horse,  fire  flashes  through  his  eyes  ;  force 
dwells  in  his  arm  and  heart :  but  warrior  and  war-horse 
are  a  vision  ;  a  revealed  Force,  nothing  more.  Stately 
they  tread  the  Earth,  as  if  it  were  a  firm  substance  : 
fool !  the  Earth  is  but  a  film  ;  it  cracks  in  twain,  and 
warrior  and  war-horse  sink  beyond  plummet's  sound- 
ing. Plummet's  ?  Fantasy  herself  will  not  follow 
them.  A  little  while  ago,  they  were  not ;  a  little  while, 
.and  they  are  not,  their  very  ashes  are  not. 

"So  has  it  been  from  the  beginning,  so  will  it  be  to 
the  end.  Generation  after  generation  takes  to  itself 
the  Form  of  a  Body  ;  and  forth-issuing  from  Cimmerian 
Night,  on  Heaven's  mission  APPEARS.  What  Force  and 
Fire  is  in  each  he  expends  :  one  grinding  in  the  mill  of 
Industry  ;  one  hunter-like  climbing  the  giddy  Alpine 
heights  of  Science  ;  one  madly  dashed  in  pieces  on  the 
rocks  of  Strife,  in  war  with  his  fellow  : — and  then  the 
Heaven-sent  is  recalled ;  his  earthly  Vesture  falls  away, 
and  soon  even  to  Sense  becomes  a  vanished  Shadow. 
Thus,  like  some  wild-flaming,  wild-thundering  train  of 
Heaven's  Artillery,  does  this  mysterious  MANKIND  thun- 
der and  flame,  in  long-drawn,  quick-succeeding  grand- 
eur, through  the  unknown  Deep.  Thus,  like  a 
God-created,  fire-breathing  Spirit-host,  we  emerge  from 
the  Inane ;  haste  stormfully  across  the  astonished 
Earth;  then  plunge  again  into  the  Inane.  Earth's 
mountains  are  levelled,  and  her  seas  filled  up,  in  our 
passage  :  can  the  Earth,  which  is  but  dead  and  a  vision, 


264  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

resist  Spirits  which  have  reality  and  are  alive  ?  On  the 
hardest  adamant  some  footprint  of  us  is  stamped-in  ; 
the  last  Rear  of  the  host  will  read  traces  of  the  earliest 
Van.  But  whence  ? — O  Heaven,  whither  ?  Sense 
knows  not ;  Faith  knows  not ;  only  that  it  is  through 
Mystery  to  Mystery,  from  God  and  to  God. 

'  We  are  such  stuff 

As  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our  little  Life. 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep  1 " 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  265 


CHAPTER   IX. 
CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 

HERE,  then,  arises  the  so  momentous  question  : 
Have  many  British  Readers  actually  arrived  with  us  at 
the  new  promised  country ;  is  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes 
now  at  last  opening  around  them?  Long  and  ad- 
venturous has  the  journey  been  :  from  those  outmost 
vulgar,  palpable  Woollen  Hulls  of  Man  ;  through  his 
wondrous  Flesh-Garments,  and  his  wondrous  Social 
Garnitures  ;  inwards  to  the  Garments  of  his  very  Soul's 
Soul,  to  Time  and  Space  themselves  !  And  now  does 
the  spiritual,  eternal  Essence  of  Man,  and  of  Mankind, 
bared  of  such  wrappages,  begin  in  any  measure  to  re- 
veal itself?  Can  many  readers  discern,  as  through  a 
glass  darkly,  in  huge  wavering  outlines,  some  primeval 
rudiments  of  Man's  Being,  what  is  changeable  divided 
from  what  is  unchangeable  ?  Does  that  Earth-Spirit's 
speech  in  Faust, — 

"  Tis  thus  at  the  roaring  Loom  of  Time  I  ply, 
And  weave  for  God  the  Garment  thou  see'st  Him  by;" 

or  that  other  thousand-times  repeated  speech  of  the 
Magician,  Shakspeare,— 

"  And  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  this  rision, 
The  cloudcapt  Towers,  the  gorgeous  Palaces, 


266  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

The  solemn  Temples,  the  great  Globe  itself, 
And  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve ; 
And  like  this  unsubstantial  pageant  faded, 
Leave  not  a  wrack  behind  ; " 

begin  to  have  some  meaning  for  us  ?  In  a  word,  do 
we  at  length  stand  safe  in  the  far  region  of  Poetic  Crea- 
tion and  Palingenesia,  where  that  Phoenix  Death-Birth 
of  Human  Society,  and  of  all  Human  Things,  appears 
possible,  is  seen  to  be  inevitable  ? 

Along  this  most  insufficient,  unheard-of  Bridge,  which 
the  Editor,  by  Heaven's  blessing,  has  now  seen  him- 
self enabled  to  conclude  if  not  complete,  it  cannot  be 
his  sober  calculation,  but  only  his  fond  hope,  that  many 
have  travelled  without  accident.  No  firm  arch,  over- 
spanning  the  Impassable  with  paved  highway,  could 
the  Editor  construct ;  only,  as  was  said,  some  zigzag 
series  of  rafts  floating  tumultuously  thereon.  Alas, 
and  the  leaps  from  raft  to  raft  were  too  often  of  a  break- 
neck character ;  the  darkness,  the  nature  of  the  element, 
all  was  against  us  ! 

Nevertheless,  may  not  here  and  there  one  of  a  thou- 
sand, provided  with  a  discursiveness  of  intellect  rare 
in  our  day,  have  cleared  the  passage,  in  spite  of  all  ? 
Happy  few  !  little  band  of  Friends  !  be  \velcome,  be 
of  courage.  By  degrees,  the  eye  grows  accustomed  to 
its  new  Whereabout ;  the  hand  can  stretch  itself  forth 
to  work  there :  it  is  in  this  grand  and  indeed  highest 
work  of  Palingenesia  that  ye  shall  labor,  each  accord- 
ing to  ability.  New  laborers  will  arrive  ;  new  Bridges 
will  be  built ;  nay,  may  not  our  own  poor  rope-and-raft 
Bridge,  in  your  passings  and  repassings,  be  mended  in 
many  a  point,  till  it  grow  quite  firm,  passable  even  for 
the  halt  ? 

Meanwhile,    of    the    innumerable     multitude    that 


SAXTOK  RESARTUS.  267 

started  with  us,  joyous  and  full  of  hope,  where  now  is 
the  innumerable  remainder,  whom  we  see  no  longer 
by  our  side  ?  The  most  have  recoiled,  and  stand  gaz- 
ing afar  off,  in  unsympathetic  astonishment,  at  our 
career  :  not  a  few,  pressing  forward  with  more  cour- 
age, have  missed  footing,  or  leaped  short;  and  now 
swim  weltering  in  the  Chaos-flood,  some  towards  this 
shore,  some  towards  that.  To  these  also  a  helping 
hand  should  be  held  out ;  at  least  some  word  of  en- 
couragement be  said. 

Or,  to  speak  without  metaphor,  with  which  mode  of 
utterance  Teufelsdrockh  unhappily  has  somewhat  in- 
fected us, — can  it  be  hidden  from  the  Editor  that  many 
a  British  Reader  sits  reading  quite  bewildered  in  head, 
and  afflicted  rather  than  instructed  by  the  present  Work  ? 
Yes,  long  ago  has  many  a  British  Reader  been,  as 
now,  demanding  with  something  like  a  snarl  :  Where- 
to does  all  this  lead;  or  what  use  is  in  it? 

In  the  way  of  replenishing  thy  purse,  or  otherwise 
aiding  thy  digestive  faculty,  O  British  Reader,  it  leads 
to  nothing,  and  there  is  no  use  in  it ;  but  rather  the 
reverse,  for  it  costs  thee  somewhat.  Nevertheless,  if 
through  this  unpromising  Horn-gate,  Teufelsdrockh, 
and  we  by  means  of  him,  have  led  thee  into  the  true 
Land  of  Dreams  ;  and  through  the  Clothes-screen,  as 
through  a  magical  Pierre-Pertuis,  thou  lookest,  even 
for  moments,  into  the  region  of  the  Wonderful,  and 
seest  and  feelest  that  thy  daily  life  is  girt  with  Wonder, 
and  based  on  Wonder,  and  thy  very  blankets  and 
breeches  are  Miracles, — then  art  thou  profited  beyond 
money's  worth  :  and  hast  a  thankfulness  towards  our 
Professor ;  nay,  perhaps  in  many  a  literary  Tea-circle 
wilt  open  thy  kind  lips,  and  audibly  express  that  same. 

Nay  farther,  art  not  thou  too  perhaps  by  this  time  made 


268  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

aware  that  all  Symbols  are  properly  Clothes  ;  that  all 
Forms  whereby  Spirit  manifests  itself  to  sense,  whether 
outwardly  or  in  the  imagination,  are  Clothes  ;  and  thus 
not  only  the  parchment  Magna  Charta,  which  a  Tailor 
was  nigh  cutting  into  measures,  but  the  Pomp  and  Au- 
thority of  Law,  the  sacredness  of  Majesty,  and  all  in- 
ferior Worships  (\Vorthships)'  are  properly  a  Vesture 
and  Raiment ;  and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  themselves 
are  articles  of  wearing-apparel  (for  the  Religious  Idea)? 
In  which  case,  must  it  not  also  be  admitted  tha.  this 
Science  of  Clothes  is  a  high  one,  and  may  with  infinitely 
deeper  study  on  thy  part  yield  richer  fruit :  that  it  t  kes 
scientific  rank  beside  Codification  and  Political  Economy 
and  the  Theory  of  the  British  Constitution  ;  nay  rather, 
from  its  prophetic  height  looks  down  on  all  these,  as 
on  so  many  weaving-shops,  and  spinning-mills,  where 
the  Vestures  which  it  has  to  fashion,  and  consecrate, 
and  distribute,  are,  too  often  by  haggard  hungry  oper- 
atives who  see  no  farther  than  their  nose,  mechani- 
cally woven  and  spun  ? 

But  omitting  all  this,  much  more  all  that  concerns 
Natural  Supernaturalism,  and  indeed  whatever  has 
reference  to  the  Ulterior  or  Transcendental  portion  of 
the  Science,  or  bears  never  so  remotely  on  that  prom- 
ised Volume  of  the  Palingenesie  der  menschlichen  Ges- 
ellschaft  (Newbirth  of  Society), — we  humbly  suggest 
that  no  province  of  Clothes-Philosophy,  even  the  lowest, 
is  without  its  direct  value,  but  that  innumerable  infer- 
ences of  a  practical  nature  may  be  drawn  therefrom. 
To  say  nothing  of  those  pregnant  considerations, 
ethical,  political,  symbolical,  which  crowd  on  the 
Clothes-Philosopher  from  the  very  threshold  of  his 
Science;  nothing  even  of  those  "architectural  ideas/' 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  lurk  at  the  bottom  of  all  Modes, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  269 

and  will  one  day,  better  unfolding  themselves,  lead 
to  important  revolutions, — let  us  glance  for  a  moment, 
and  with  the  faintest  light  of  Clothes  Philosophy, 
on  what  may  be  called  the  Habilatory  Class  of  our 
fellow-men.  Here  too  overlooking,  where  so  much 
were  to  be  looked  on,  the  million  spinners,  weavers, 
fullers,  dyers,  washers,  and  wringers,  that  puddle  and 
muddle  in  their  dark  recesses,  to  make  us  Clothes,  and 
die  that  we  may  live, — let  us  but  turn  the  reader's 
attention  upon  two  small  divisions  of  mankind,  who, 
like  moths,  may  be  regarded  as  Cloth-animals,  creatures 
that  live,  move  and  have  their  being  in  Cloth  :  we 
mean,  Dandies  and  Tailors. 

In  regard  to  both  which  small  divisions  it  may  be 
asserted  without  scruple,  that  the  public  feeling,  un- 
enlightened by  Philosophy,  is  at  fault ;  and  even  that 
the  dictates  of  humanity  are  violated.  As  will  perhaps 
abundantly  appear  to  readers  of  the  two  following 
Chapters. 


270  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  DANDIACAL  BODY. 

FIRST,  touching  Dandies,  let  us  consider,  with  some 
scientific  strictness,  what  a  Dandy  specially  is.  A 
Dandy  is  a  Clothes-wearing  Man,  a  Man  whose  trade, 
office  and  existence  consists  in  the  wearing  of  Clothes. 
Every  faculty  of  his  soul,  spirit,  purse  and  person  is 
heroically  consecrated  to  this  one  object,  the  wearing 
of  Clothes  wisely  and  well :  so  that  as  others  dress  to 
live,  he  lives  to  dress.  The  all-importance  of  Clothes, 
which  a  German  Professor,  of  unequalled  learning  and 
acumen,  writes  his  enormous  Volume  to  demonstrate, 
has  sprung  up  in  the  intellect  of  the  Dandy  without 
effort,  like  an  instinct  of  genius  ;  he  is  inspired  with 
Cloth,  a  Poet  of  Cloth.  What  Teufelsdrockh  would 
call  a  "Divine  Idea  of  Cloth"  is  born  with  him;  and 
this,  like  other  such  Ideas,  will  express  itself  out- 
wardly, or  wring  his  heart  asunder  with  unutterable 
throes. 

But,  like  a  generous,  creative  enthusiast,  he  fear- 
lessly makes  his  Idea  an  Action  ;  shows  himself  in 
peculiar  guise  to  mankind  ;  walks  forth,  a  witness 
and  living  Martyr  to  the  eternal  worth  of  Clothes. 
We  called  him  a  Poet :  is  not  his  body  the  (stuffed) 
parchment-skin  whereon  he  writes,  with  cunning  Hud- 
dersfield  dyes,  a  Sonnet  to  his  mistress'  eyebrow  ? 
Say,  rather,  an  Epos,  and  Clolha  Virumque  cano,  to 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


271 


the  whole  world,  in  Macaronic  verses,  which  he  that 
runs  may  read.  Nay,  if  you  grant,  what  seems  to  be 
admissible,  that  the  Dandy  has  a  Thinking-principle 
in  him,  and  some  notions  of  Time  and  Space,  is  there 
not  in  this  Life-devotedness  to  Cloth,  in  this  so  willing 
sacrifice  of  the  Immortal  to  the  Perishable,  something 
(though  in  reverse  order)  of  that  blending  and  identifi- 
cation of  Eternity  with  Time,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
constitutes  the  Prophetic  character  ? 

And  now,  for  all  this  perennial  Martyrdom,  and 
Poesy,  and  even  Prophecy,  what  is  it  that  the  Dandy 
asks  in  return  ?  Solely,  we  may  say,  that  you  would 
recognize  his  existence ;  would  admit  him  to  be  a  living 
object ;  or  even  failing  this,  a  visual  object,  or  thing 
that  will  reflect  rays  of  light.  Your  silver  or  your  gold 
(beyond  what  the  niggardly  Law  has  already  secured 
him)  he  solicits  not  ;  simply  the  glance  of  your  eyes. 
Understand  his  mystic  significance,  or  altogether  miss 
and  misinterpret  it  ;  do  but  look  at  him,  and  he  is 
contented.  May  we  not  well  cry  shame  on  an  un- 
grateful world,  which  refuses  even  this  poor  boon  ; 
which  will  waste  its  optic  faculty  on  dried  Crocodiles, 
and  Siamese  Twins  ;  and  over  the  domestic  wonder- 
ful wonder  of  wonders,  a  live  Dandy,  glance  with 
hasty  indifference,  and  a  scarcely  concealed  contempt ! 
Him  no  Zoologist  classes  among  the  Mammalia,  no 
Anatomist  dissects  with  care  :  when  did  we  see  any 
injected  Preparation  of  the  Dandy  in  our  Museums  ; 
any  specimen  of  him  preserved  in  spirits?  Lord  Her- 
ringbone may  dress  himself  in  a  snuff-brown  suit,  with 
snuff-brown  shirt  and  shoes  :  it  skills  not ;  the  undis- 
cerning  public,  occupied  with  grosser  wants,  passes  by 
regardless  on  the  other  side. 

The  age  of  Curiosity,  like  that  of  Chivalry,  is  indeed, 


272  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

properly  speaking,  gone.  Yet  perhaps  only  gone  to 
sleep  :  for  here  arises  the  Clothes-Philosophy,  to  resus- 
citate, strangely  enough  both  the  one  and  the  other  ! 
Should  sound  views  of  this  Science  come  to  prevail, 
the  essential  nature  of  the  British  Dandy,  and  the 
mystic  significance  that  lies  in  him,  cannot  always 
remain  hidden  under  laughable  and  lamentable  hallu- 
cination. The  following  long  Extract  from  Professor 
Teufelsdrockh  may  set  the  matter,  if  not  in  its  true 
light,  yet  in  the  way  towards  such.  It  is  to  be  re- 
gretted, however,  that  here,  as  so  often  elsewhere,  the 
Professor's  keen  philosophic  perspicacity  is  somewhat 
marred  by  a  certain  mixture  of  almost  owlish  pur- 
blindness,  or  else  of  some  perverse,  ineffectual,  ironic 
tendency  ;  our  readers  shall  judge  which  : 

"In  these  distracted  times,"  writes  he,  "when  the 
Religious  Principle,  driven  out  of  most  Churches, 
either  lies  unseen  in  the  hearts  of  good  men,  looking 
and  longing  and  silently  working  there  towards  some 
new  Revelation  ;  or  else  wanders  homeless  over  the 
world,  like  a  disembodied  soul  seeking  its  terrestrial 
organization, — into  how  many  strange  shapes  of  Super- 
stition and  Fanaticism,  does  it  not  tentatively  and 
errantly  cast  itself  !  The  higher  Enthusiasm  of  man's 
nature  is  for  the  while  without  Exponent :  yet  does  it 
continue  indestructible,  unweariedly  active,  and  work 
blindly  in  the  great  chaotic  deep  :  thus  Sect  after  Sect, 
and  Church  after  Church,  bodies  itself  forth,  and  melts 
again  into  new  metamorphosis. 

"Chiefly  is  this  observable  in  England,  which,  as 
the  wealthiest  and  worst-instructed  of  European 
nations,  offers  precisely  the  elements  (of  Heat,  namely, 
and  of  Darkness),  in  which  such  moon-calves  and 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


273 


monstrosities  are  best  generated.  Among  the  newer 
Sects  of  that  country,  one  of  the  most  notable,  and 
closely  connected  with  our  present  subject,  is  that  of 
the  Dandies ;  concerning  which,  what  little  informa- 
tion I  have  been  able  to  procure  may  fitly  stand  here. 

"It  is  true,  certain  of  the  English  Journalists,  men 
generally  without  sense  for  the  Religious  Principle,  or 
judgment  for  its  manifestations,  speak,  in  their  brief 
enigmatic  notices,  as  if  this  were  perhaps  rather  a 
Secular  Sect,  and  not  a  Religious  one ;  nevertheless, 
to  the  psychologic  eye  its  devotional  and  even  sacri- 
ficial character  plainly  enough  reveals  itself.  Whether 
it  belongs  to  the  class  of  Fetish-worships,  or  of  Hero- 
worships  or  Polytheisms,  or  to  what  other  class,  may 
in  the  present  state  of  our  intelligence  remain  unde- 
cided (schweben).  A  certain  touch  of  Manicheism,  not 
indeed  in  the  Gnostic  shape,  is  discernible  enough  : 
also  (for  human  Error  walks  in  a  cycle,  and  reappears 
at  intervals)  a  not-inconsiderable  resemblance  to  that 
superstition  of  the  Athos  Monks,  who  by  fasting  from 
all  nourishment,  and  looking  intensely  for  a  length  of 
time  in  their  own  navels,  came  to  discern  therein  the 
true  Apocalypse  of  Nature  and  Heaven  Unveiled.  To 
my  own  surmise,  it  appears  as  if  this  Dandiacal-sect 
were  but  a  new  modification,  adapted  to  the  new  time 
of  that  primeval  Superstition,  Self-worship;  which  Zer- 
dusht,  Quangfoutchee,  Mohamed,  and  others,  strove 
rather  to  subordinate  and  restrain  than  to  eradicate  ; 
and  which  only  in  the  purer  forms  of  Religion  has 
been  altogether  rejected.  Wherefore,  if  any  one 
chooses  to  name  it  revived  Ahrimanism,  or  a  new 
figure  of  Demon-Worship,  I  have,  so  far  as  is  yet 
visible,  no  objection. 

"For  the  rest,  these  people,  animated  with  the  zeal 


274  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

of  a  new  Sect,  display  courage  and  perseverance,  and 
what  force  there  is  in  man's  nature,  though  never  so 
enslaved.  They  affect  great  purity  and  separatism  ; 
distinguish  themselves  by  a  particular  costume  (where- 
of some  notices  were  given  in  the  earlier  part  of  this 
Volume)  ;  likewise,  so  far  as  possible,  by  a  particular 
speech  (apparently  some  broken  Lingua-franca,  or 
English-French)  ;  and,  on  the  whole,  strive  to  main- 
tain a  true  Nazarene  deportment,  and  keep  themselves 
unspotted  from  the  world. 

"They  have  their  Temples,  whereof  the  chief,  as 
the  Jewish  Temple  did,  stands  in  their  metropolis  ;  and 
is  named  Almack's,  a  word  of  uncertain  etymology. 
They  worship  principally  by  night ;  and  have  their 
Highpriest^and  Highpriestesses,  who,  however,  do  not 
continue  for  life.  The  rites,  by  some  supposed  to  be 
of  the  Menadic  sort,  or  perhaps  with  an  Eleusinian  or 
Cabiric  character,  are  held  strictly  secret.  Nor  are 
Sacred  Books  wanting  to  the  Sect ;  these  they  call 
Fashionable  Novels  :  however,  the  Canon  is  not  com- 
pleted, and  some  are  canonical  and  others  not. 

"Of  such  Sacred  Books,  I,  not  without  expense, 
procured  myself  some  samples ;  and  in  hope  of  true 
insight,  and  with  the  zeal  which  beseems  an  Inquirer 
into  Clothes,  sent  to  interpret  and  study  them.  But 
wholly  to  no  purpose  :  that  tough  faculty  of  reading, 
for  which  the  world  will  not  refuse  me  credit,  was  here 
for  the  first  time  foiled  and  set  at  naught.  In  vain  that 
I  summoned  my  whole  energies  (mich  weidlich  an- 
slrengle),  and  did  my  very  utmost ;  at  the  end  of  some 
short  space,  I  was  uniformly  seized  with  not  so  much 
what  I  can  call  a  drumming  in  my  ears,  as  a  kind  of 
infinite,  unsufferable  Jew's-harping  and  scrannel-piping 
there ;  to  which  the  frightfullest  species  of  Magnetic 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  275 

Sleep  soon  supervened.  And  if  I  strove  to  shake  this 
away,  and  absolutely  would  not  yield,  there  came  a 
hitherto  unfelt  sensation,  as  of  Delirium  Tremens,  and 
a  melting  into  total  deliquium  :  till  at  last,  by  order  of 
the  Doctor,  dreading-  ruin  to  my  whole  intellectual  and 
bodily  faculties,  and  a  general  breaking-up  of  the  con- 
stitution, I  reluctantly  but  determinedly  forbore.  Was 
there  some  miracle  at  work  here  ;  like  those  Fire-balls, 
and  supernal  and  infernal  prodigies,  which,  in  the  case 
of  the  Jewish  Mysteries,  have  also  more  than  once 
scared-back  the  Alien  ?  Be  this  as  it  may,  such  failure 
on  my  part,  after  best  efforts,  must  excuse  the  imper- 
fection of  this  sketch  ;  altogether  incomplete,  yet  the 
completest  I  could  give  of  a  Sect  too  singular '  to  be 
omitted. 

"  Loving  my  own  life  and  senses  as  I  do,  no  power 
shall  induce  me,  as  a  private  individual,  to  open  an- 
other Fashionable  Novel.  But  luckily,  in  this  dilemma, 
comes  a  hand  from  the  clouds  ;  whereby  if  not  victory, 
deliverance  is  held  out  to  me.  Round  one  of  those 
Book-packages,  which  the  Stillschweigen 'sche  Buch- 
handlung  is  in  the  habit  of  importing  from  England, 
come,  as  is  usual,  various  waste  printed-sheets  (Macu- 
laiur-blatler),  by  way  of  interior  wrappage  :  into  these  the 
Clothes-Philosopher,  with  a  certain  Mohamedan  rever- 
ence even  for  waste-paper,  where  curious  knowledge 
will  sometimes  hover,  disdains  not  to  cast  his  eye. 
Readers  may  judge  of  his  astonishment  when  on  such 
a  defaced  stray-sheet,  probably  the  outcast  fraction  of 
some  English  Periodical,  such  as  they  name  Magazine, 
appears  something  like  a  Dissertation  on  this  very  sub- 
ject of  Fashionable  Novels  !  It  sets  out,  indeed,  chiefly 
from  a  Secular  point  of  view ;  directing  itself,  not  with- 
out asperity,  against  some  to  me  unknown  individual 


276  SARTOR  RES  ART  US. 

named  Pelham,  who  seems  to  be  a  Mystagogue,  and 
leading  Teacher  and  Preacher  of  the  Sect;  so  that, 
what  indeed  otherwise  was  not  to  be  expected  in  such 
a  fugitive  fragmentary  sheet,  the  true  secret,  the  Reli- 
gious physiognomy  and  physiology  of  the  Dandiacal 
Body,  is  nowise  laid  fully  open  there.  Nevertheless, 
scattered  lights  do  from  time  to  time  sparkle  out, 
whereby  I  have  endeavored  to  profit.  Nay,  in  one 
passage  selected  from  the  Prophecies,  or  Mythic  The- 
ogonies,  or  whatever  they  are  (for  the  style  seems  very 
mixed)  of  this  Mystagogue,  I  find  what  appears  to  be  a 
Confession  of  Faith,  or  Whole  Duty  of  Man,  accord- 
ing to  the  tenets  of  that  Sect.  Which  Confession  or 
Whole  Duty,  therefore,  as  proceeding  from  a  source 
so  authentic,  I  shall  here  arrange  under  Seven  distinct 
Articles,  and  in  very  abridged  shape  lay  before  the 
German  world ;  therewith  taking  leave  of  this  matter. 
Observe  also,  that  to  avoid  possibility  of  error,  I,  as 
far  as  may  be,  quote  literally  from  the  Original. 


"  ARTICLES  OF  FAITH. 

'  I.  Coats  should  have  nothing  of  the  triangle  about 
them ;  at  the  same  time,  wrinkles  behind  should  be 
carefully  avoided. 

'  2.  The  collar  is  a  very  important  point :  it  should 
be  low  behind,  and  slightly  rolled. 

'  3.  No  license  of  fashion  can  allow  a  man  of  deli- 
cate taste  to  adopt  the  posterial  luxuriance  of  a  Hot- 
tentot 

'  4.     There  is  safety  in  a  swallow-tail. 

'5.  The  good  sense  of  a  gentleman  is  nowhere 
more  finely  developed  than  in  his  rings. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  27^ 

*6.  It  is  permitted  to  mankind,  under  certain  re- 
strictions, to  wear  white  waistcoats. 

'  7.  The  trousers  must  be  exceedingly  tight  across 
the  hips. ' 

"  All  which  Propositions  I,  for  the  present,  content 
myself  with  modestly  but  peremptorily  and  irrevoca- 
bly denying. 

"  In  strange  contrast  with  this  Dandiacal  Body 
stands  another  British  Sect,  originally,  as  I  understand, 
of  Ireland,  where  its  chief  seat  still  is  ;  but  known  also 
in  the  main  Island,  and  indeed  everywhere  rapidly 
spreading.  As  this  Sect  has  hitherto  emitted  no 
Canonical  Books,  it  remains  to  me  in  the  same  state  of 
obscurity  as  the  Dandiacal,  which  has  published  Books 
that  the  unassisted  human  faculties  are  inadequate  to 
read.  The  members  appear  to  be  designated  by  a  con- 
siderable diversity  of  names,  according  to  their  various 
places  of  establishment :  in  England  they  are  gener- 
ally called  the  Drudge  Sect ;  also,  unphilosophically 
enough,  the  White  Negroes;  and,  chiefly  in  scorn  by 
those  of  other  communions,  the  Ragged-Beggar  Sect. 
In  Scotland,  again,  I  find  them  entitled  Hallanshakers, 
or  the  Stook  of  Duds  Sect ;  any  individual  communicant 
is  named  Stook  of  Duds  (that  is,  Shock  of  Rags),  in 
allusion,  doubtless,  to  their  professional  Costume. 
While  in  Ireland,  which,  as  mentioned,  is  their  grand 
parent  hive,  they  go  by  a  perplexing  multiplicity  of  des- 
ignations, such  as  Bogtrotters,  Redshanks,  Ribbonmen, 
Cottiers,  Peep-of-Day  Boys,  Babes  of  the  Wood,  Rockites, 
Poor-Slaves :  which  last,  however,  seems  to  be  the  pri- 
mary and  generic  name ;  whereto,  probably  enough, 
the  others  are  only  subsidiary  species,  or  slight  varie- 
ties ;  or,  at  most,  propagated  offsets  from  the  parent 
stem,  whose  minute  subdivisions,  and  shades  of  dif- 


278  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

ference,  it  were  here  loss  of  time  to  dwell  on.  Enough 
for  us  to  understand,  what  seems  indubitable,  that  the 
original  Sect  is  that  of  the  Poor-Slaves  :  whose  doctrines, 
practices,  and  fundamental  characteristics  pervade  and 
animate  the  whole  Body,  howsoever  denominated  or 
outwardly  diversified. 

"  The  precise  speculative  tenets  of  this  Brotherhood  : 
how  the  Universe,  and  Man,  and  Man's  Life,  picture 
themselves  to  the  mind  of  an  Irish  Poor-Slave  ;  with 
what  feelings  and  opinions  he  looks  forward  on  the 
Future,  round  on  the  Present,  back  on  the  Past,  it  were 
extremely  difficult  to  specify.  Something  Monastic 
there  appears  to  be  in  their  Constitution  :  we  find  them 
bound  by  the  two  Monastic  Vows,  of  Poverty  and 
Obedience ;  whi'ch  Vows,  especially  the  former,  it  is 
said,  they  observe  with  great  strictness  ;  nay,  as  I  have 
understood  it,  they  are  pledged,  and  be  it  by  any  sol- 
emn Nazarene  ordination  or  not,  irrevocably  consecrated 
thereto  even  before  birth.  That  the  third  Monastic  Vow, 
of  Chastity,  is  rigidly  enforced  among  them,  I  find  no 
ground  to  conjecture. 

"  Furthermore,  they  appear  to  imitate  the  Dandiacal 
Sect  in  their  grand  principle  of  wearing  a  peculiar  Cos- 
tume. Of  which  Irish  Poor-Slave  Costume  no  descrip- 
tion will  indeed  be  found  in  the  present  Volume  ;  for  this 
reason,  that  by  the  imperfect  organ  of  Language  it  did 
not  seem  describable.  Their  raiment  consists  of  innu- 
merable skirts,  lappets  and  irregular  wings,  of  all  cloths 
and  of  all  colors  ;  through  the  labyrinthic  intricacies  of 
which  their  bodies  are  introduced  by  some  unknown 
process.  It  is  fastened  together  by  a  multiplex  combina- 
tion of  buttons,  thrums  and  skewers  ;  to  which  fre- 
quently is  added  a  girdle  of  leather,  of  hempen  or  even  of 
straw  rope,  round  the  loins.  To  straw  rope,  indeed, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  279 

they  seem  partial,  and  often  wear  it  by  way  of  sandals. 
In  head-dress  they  affect  a  certain  freedom  :  hats  with 
partial  brim,  without  crown,  or  with  only  a  loose, 
hinged,  or  valved  crown  ;  in  the  former  case,  they  some- 
times invert  the  hat,  and  wear  it  brim  uppermost,  like 
a  University-cap,  with  what  view  is  unknown. 

"  The  name  Poor-Slaves  seems  to  indicate  a  Slavonic, 
Polish,  or  Russian  origin  :  not  so,  however,  the  inte- 
rior essence  and  spirit  of  their  Superstition,  which  rather 
displays  a  Teutonic  or  Druidical  character.  One  might 
fancy  them  worshippers  of  Hertha,  or  the  Earth  :  for 
they  dig  and  affectionately  work  continually  in  her 
bosom  ;  or  else,  shut-up  in  private  Oratories,  meditate 
and  manipulate  the  substances  derived  from  her  ;  sel- 
dom looking-up  towards  the  Heavenly  Luminaries,  and 
then  with  comparative  indifference.  Like  the  Druids, 
on  the  other  hand,  they  live  in  dark  dwellings  ;  often 
even  breaking  their  glass-windows,  where  they  find 
such,  and  stuffing  them  up  with  pieces  of  raiment,  or 
other  opaque  substances,  till  the  fit  obscurity  is  re- 
stored. Again,  like  all  followers  of  Nature- Worship, 
they  are  liable  to  outbreakings  of  an  enthusiasm  rising 
to  ferocity  ;  and  burn  men,  if  not  in  wicker  idols,  yet 
in  sod  cottages. 

"  In  respect  of  diet,  they  have  also  their  observances. 
All  Poor-Slaves  are  Rhizophagous  (or  Root-eaters)  ;  a 
few  are  Ichthyophagous,  and  use  Salted  Herrings  : 
other  animal  food  they  abstain  from  ;  except  indeed, 
with  perhaps  some  strange  inverted  fragment  of  a 
Brahminical  feeling,  such  animals  as  die  a  natural 
death.  Their  universal  sustenance  is  the  root  named 
Potato,  cooked  by  fire  alone  ;  and  generally  without 
condiment  or  relish  of  any  kind,  save  an  unknown 
condiment  named  Point,  into  the  meaning  of  which  I 


28 o  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

have  vainly  inquired ;  the  victual  Polatoes-and-Point 
not  appearing,  at  least  not  with  specific  accuracy  of 
description,  in  any  European  Cookery-Book  whatever. 
For  drink,  they  use,  with  an  almost  epigrammatic 
counterpoise  of  taste,  Milk,  which  is  the  mildest  of 
liquors,  and  Potheen,  which  is  the  fiercest.  This  latter 
I  have  tasted,  as  well  as  the  English  Blue-Ruin,  and  the 
Scotch  Whisky,  analogous  fluids  used  by  the  Sect  in  those 
countries  :  it  evidently  contains  some  form  of  alcohol, 
in  the  highest  state  of  concentration,  though  disguised 
with  acrid  oils  ;  and  is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  pun- 
gent substance  known  to  me, — indeed,  a  perfect  liquid 
fire.  In  all  their  Religious  Solemnities,  Potheen  is  said 
to  be  an  indispensable  requisite,  and  largely  consumed. 

"An  Irish  Traveller,  of  perhaps  common  veracity, 
who  presents  himself  under  the  to  me  unmeaning  title 
of  T7ie  late  John  Bernard,  offers  the  following  sketch  of 
a  domestic  establishment,  the  inmates  whereof,  though 
such  is  not  stated  expressly,  appear  to  have  been  of 
that  faith.  Thereby  shall  my  German  readers  now 
behold  an  Irish  Poor-Slave,  as  it  were  with  their  own 
eyes ;  and  even  see  him  at  meat.  Moreover,  in  the 
so  precious  waste-paper  sheet  above  mentioned,  I  have 
found  some  corresponding  picture  of  a  Dandiacal  House- 
hold painted  by  that  same  Dandiacal  Mystagogue,  or 
Theogonist ;  this  also,  by  way  of  counterpart  and  con- 
trast, the  world  shall  look  into. 

' '  First,  therefore,  of  the  Poor-Slave,  who  appears  like- 
wise to  have  been  a  species  of  Innkeeper.  I  quote 
from  the  original : 

Poor-Slave  Household. 

"  'The  furniture  of  this  Caravansera  consisted  of 
a  large  iron  Pot,  two  oaken  Tables,  two  Benches,  two 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  281 

Chairs,  and  a  Potheen  Noggin.  There  was  a  Loft 
above  (attainable  by  a  ladder),  upon  which  the  inmates 
slept ;  and  the  space  below  was  divided  by  a  hurdle 
into  two  Apartments  ;  the  one  for  theii  cow  and  pig, 
the  other  for  themselves  and  guests.  On  entering  the 
house  we  discovered  the  family,  eleven  in  number,  at 
dinner  ;  the  father  sitting  at  the  top,  the  mother  at  the 
bottom,  the  children  on  each  side,  of  a  large  oaken 
Board,  which  was  scooped-out  in  the  middle,  like  a 
trough,  to  receive  the  contents  of  their  Pot  of  Potatoes. 
Little  holes  were  cut  at  equal  distances  to  contain  Salt ; 
and  a  bowl  of  Milk  stood  on  the  table  :  all  the  luxuries 
of  meat  and  beer,  bread,  knives  and  dishes  were  dis- 
pensed with.'  The  Poor-Slave  himself,  our  Traveller 
found,  as  he  says,  broad-backed,  black-browed,  of  great 
personal  strength,  and  mouth  from  ear  to  ear.  His 
Wife  was  a  sun-browned  but  well-featured  woman  ; 
and  his  young  ones,  bare  and  chubby,  had  the  appetite 
of  ravens.  Of  their  Philosophical  or  Religious  tenets  or 
observances,  no  notice  or  hint. 

"But  now,  secondly,  of  the  Dandiacal  Household; 
in  which,  truly,  that  often-mentioned  Mystagogue  and 
inspired  Penman  himself  has  his  abode  : 

Dandiacal  Household. 

"'A  Dressing-room  splendidly  furnished;  violet- 
colored  curtains,  chairs  and  ottomans  of  the  same  hue. 
Two  full-length  Mirrors  are  placed,  one  on  each  side 
of  a  table,  which  supports  the  luxuries  of  the  Toilet. 
Several  Bottles  of  Perfumes,  arranged  in  a  peculiar 
fashion,  stand  upon  a  smaller  table  of  mother-of-pearl : 
opposite  to  these  are  placed  the  appurtenances  of 
Lavation,  richly  wrought  in  frosted  silver.  A  Wardrobe 
of  Buhl  is  on  the  left ;  the  doors  of  which,  being  partly 


282  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

open,  discover  a  profusion  of  Clothes ;  Shoes  of  a  sin- 
gularly small  size  monopolize  the  lower  shelves.  Front- 
ing the  wardrobe  a  door  ajar  gives  some  slight  glimpse 
of  a  Bathroom.  Folding-doors  in  the  background.— 
Enter  the  Author/  our  Theogonist  in  person,  'obsequi- 
ously preceded  by  a  French  Valet,  in  white  silk  Jacket 
and  cambric  Apron.' 

"Such  are  the  two  Sects  which,  at  this  moment, 
divide  the  more  unsettled  portion  of  the  British  People  ; 
and  agitate  that  ever-vexed  country.  To  the  eye  of 
the  political  Seer,  their  mutual  relation,  pregnant  with 
the  elements  of  discord  and  hostility,  is  far  from  con- 
soling. These  two  principles  of  Dandiacal  Self-worship, 
or  Demon-worship,  and  Poor-Slavish  or  Drudgical 
Earth-worship,  or  whatever  that  same  Drudgism  may 
be,  do  as  yet  indeed  manifest  themselves  under  distant 
and  nowise  considerable  shapes  :  nevertheless,  in  their 
roots  and  subterranean  ramifications,  they  extend 
through  the  entire  structure  of  Society,  and  work  un- 
weariedly  in  the  secret  depths  of  English  national  Exist- 
ence ;  striving  to  separate  and  isolate  it  into  two  con- 
tradictory, uncommunicating  masses. 

"In  numbers,  and  even  individual  strength,  the 
Poor-Slaves  or  Drudges,  it  would  seem,  are  hourly  in- 
creasing. The  Dandiacal,  again,  is  by  nature  no  pros- 
elytizing Sect ;  but  it  boasts  of  great  hereditary  resources, 
and  is  strong  by  union  ;  whereas  the  Drudges,  split  into 
parties,  have  as  yet  no  rallying-point ;  or  at  best  only 
co-operate  by  means  of  partial  secret  affiliations.  If, 
indeed,  there  were  to  arise  a  Communion  of  Drudges, 
as  there  is  already  a  Communion  of  Saints,  what 
strangest  effects  would  follow  therefrom  !  Dandyism 
as  yet  affects  to  look-down  on  Drudgism  :  but  perhaps 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  283 

the  hour  of  trial,  when  it  will  be  practically  seen  which 
ought  to  look  down,  and  which  up,  is  not  so  distant. 

"To  me  it  seems  probable  that  the  two  Sects  will 
one  day  part  England  between  them ;  each  recruiting 
itself  from  the  intermediate  ranks,  till  there  be  none 
left  to  enlist  on  either  side.  Those  Dandiacal  Man- 
icheans,  with  the  host  of  Dandyizing  Christians,  will 
form  one  body  :  the  Drudges,  gathering  round  them 
whosoever  is  Drudgical,  be  he  Christian  or  Infidel 
Pagan  ;  sweeping-up  likewise  all  manner  of  Utilitarians, 
Radicals,  refractory  Potwallopers,  and  so  forth,  into 
their  general  mass,  will  form  another.  I  could  liken 
Dandyism  and  Drudgism  to  two  bottomless  boiling 
Whirlpools  that  had  broken-out  on  opposite  quarters 
of  the  firm  land  :  as  yet  they  appear  only  disquieted, 
foolishly  bubbling  wells,  which  man's  art  might  cover- 
in  ;  yet  mark  them,  their  diameter  is  daily  widening  : 
they  are  hollow  Cones  that  boil-up  from  the  infinite 
Deep,  over  which  your  firm  land  is  but  a  thin  crust  or 
rind  !  Thus  daily  is  the  intermediate  land  crumbling- 
in,  daily  the  empire  of  the  two  Buchan-Bullers  extend- 
ing ;  till  now  there  is  but  a  foot-plank,  a  mere  film  of 
Land  between  them  ;  this  too  is  washed  away  :  and 
then — we  have  the  true  Hell  of  Waters,  and  Noah's 
Deluge  is  outdeluged ! 

"Or  better,  I  might  call  them  two  boundless,  and 
indeed  unexampled  Electric  Machines  (turned  by  the 
'Machinery  of  Society'),  with  batteries  of  opposite 
quality  ;  Drudgism  the  Negative,  Dandyism  the  Posi- 
tive :  one  attracts  hourly  towards  it  and  appropriates 
all  the  Positive  Electricity  of  the  nation  (namely,  the 
Money  thereof)  ;  the  other  is  equally  busy  with  the 
Negative  (that  is  to  say  the  Hunger),  which  is  equally 
potent.  Hitherto  you  see  only  partial  transient  sparkles 


284  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

and  sputters  :  but  wait  a  little,  till  the  entire  nation  is 
in  an  electric  state  ;  till  your  whole  vital  Electricity,  no 
longer  healthfully  Neutral,  is  cut  into  two  isolated  por- 
tions of  Positive  and  Negative  (of  Money  and  of 
Hunger)  ;  and  stands  there  bottled-up  in  two  World- 
Batteries  !  The  stirring  of  a  child's  finger  brings  the 
two  together ;  and  then — What  then  ?  The  Earth  is 
but  shivered  into  impalpable  smoke  by  that  Doom's- 
thunderpeal ;  the  Sun  misses  one  of  his  Planets  in 
Space,  and  thenceforth  there  are  no  eclipses  of  the 
Moon. — Or  better  still,  I  might  liken" 

O,  enough,  enough  of  likenings  and  similitudes ;  in 
excess  of  which,  truly,  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  Teufels- 
drockh  or  ourselves  sin  the  more. 

We  have  often  blamed  him  for  a  habit  of  wire-draw- 
ing and  over-refining ;  from  of  old  we  have  been 
familiar  with  his  tendency  to  Mysticism  and  Religi- 
osity, whereby  in  everything  he  was  still  scenting-out 
Religion  :  but  never  perhaps  did  these  amaurosis-suf- 
fusions  so  cloud  and  distort  his  otherwise  most  piercing 
vision,  as  in  this  of  the  Dandiacal  Body  !  Or  was  there 
something  of  intended  satire  ;  is  the  Professor  and  Seer 
not  quite  the  blinkard  he  affects  to  be  ?  Of  an  ordinary 
mortal  we  should  have  decisively  answered  in  the 
affirmative ;  but  with  a  Teufelsdrockh  there  ever  hovers 
some  shade  of  doubt.  In  the  meanwhile,  if  satire  were 
actually  intended,  the  case  is  little  better.  There  are 
not  wanting  men  who  will  answer  :  Does  your  Pro- 
fessor take  us  for  simpletons  ?  His  irony  has  overshot 
itself  :  we  see  through  it,  and  perhaps  through  him. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  285 


CHAPTER  XI. 
TAILORS. 

THUS,  however,  has  our  first  Practical  Inference 
from  the  Clothes-Philosophy,  that  which  respects 
Dandies,  been  sufficiently  drawn  ;  and  we  come  now 
to  the  second,  concerning  Tailors.  On  this  latter 
our  opinion  happily  quite  coincides  with  that  of  Teu- 
felsdrockh  himself,  as  expressed  in  the  concluding 
page  of  his  Volume,  to  whom,  therefore,  we  willingly 
give  place.  Let  him  speak  his  own  last  words,  in  his 
own  way  : 

"Upwards  of  a  century,"  says  he,  "must  elapse,  and 
still  the  bleeding  fight  of  Freedom  be  fought,  whoso  is 
noblest  perishing  in  the  van,  and  thrones  be  hurled  on 
altars  like  Pelion  on  Ossa,  and  the  Moloch  of  Iniquity 
have  his  victims,  and  the  Michael  of  Justice  his  martyrs, 
before  Tailors  can  be  admitted  to  their  true  prerogatives 
of  manhood,  and  this  last  wound  of  suffering  Humanity 
be  closed. 

"If  aught  in  the  history  of  the  world's  blindness 
could  surprise  us,  here  might  we  indeed  pause  and 
wonder.  An  idea  has  gone  abroad,  and  fixed  itself 
down  into  a  wide-spreading  rooted  error,  that  Tailors 
are  a  distinct  species  in  Physiology,  not  Men,  but  frac- 
tional Parts  of  a  Man.  Call  any  one  a  Schneider  (Cutter, 
Tailor),  is  it  not,  in  our  dislocated,  hoodwinked,  and 
indeed  delirious  condition  of  Society,  equivalent  to 
defying  his  perpetual  fellest  enmity?  The  epithet 


286  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

schneider-mdssig  (tailor-like)  betokens  an  otherwise 
unapproachable  degree  of  pusillanimity  :  we  introduce 
a  Tailor  s  Melancholy,  more  opprobrious  than  any  Lep- 
rosy, into  our  Books  of  Medicine  ;  and  fable  I  know 
not  what  of  his  generating  it  by  living  on  Cabbage. 
Why  should  I  speak  of  Hans  Sachs  (himself  a  Shoe- 
maker, or  kind  of  Leather-Tailor),  with  his  Schneider 
mil  dem  Panier  ?  Why  of  Shakspeare,  in  his  Taming 
of  the  Shrew,  and  elsewhere?  Does  it  not  stand  on 
record  that  the  English  Queen  Elizabeth,  receiving  a 
deputation  of  Eighteen  Tailors,  addressed  them  with  a 
'Good  morning,  gentlemen  both  !  '  Did  not  the  same 
virago  boast  that  she  had  a  Cavalry  Regiment,  whereof 
neither  horse  nor  man  could  be  injured  ;  her  Regiment, 
namely,  of  Tailors  on  Mares  ?  Thus  everywhere  is  the 
falsehood  taken  for  granted,  and  acted  on  as  an  indis- 
putable fact. 

"Nevertheless,  need  I  put  the  question  to  any 
Physiologist,  whether  it  is  disputable  or  not  ?  Seems 
it  not  at  least  presumable,  that,  under  his  Clothes,  the 
Tailor  has  bones  and  viscera,  and  other  muscles  than 
the  sartorious?  Which  function  of  manhood  is  the 
Tailor  not  conjectured  to  perform?  Can  he  not  arrest 
for  debt  ?  Is  he  not  in  most  countries  a  tax-paying 
animal  ? 

"To  no  reader  of  this  Volume  can  it  be  doubtful 
which  conviction  is  mine.  Nay  if  the  fruit  of  these 
long  vigils,  and  almost  preternatural  Inquiries,  is  not 
to  perish  utterly,  the  world  will  have  approximated 
towards  a  higher  Truth  ;  and  the  doctrine,  which  Swift, 
with  the  keen  forecast  of  genius,  dimly  anticipated, 
will  stand  revealed  in  clear  light :  that  the  Tailor  is  not 
only  a  Man,  but  something  of  a  Creator  or  Divinity. 
Of  Franklin  it  was  said,  that  '  he  snatched  the  Thunder 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  287 

from  Heaven  and  the  Sceptre  from  Kings  : '  but  which 
is  greater,  I  would  ask,  he  that  lends,  or  he  that 
snatches  ?  For,  looking  away  from  individual  cases, 
and  how  a  man  is  by  the  Tailor  new-created  into  a 
Nobleman,  and  clothed  not  only  with  Wool  but  with 
Dignity  and  a  Mystic  Dominion, — is  not  the  fair  fabric 
-of  Society  itself,  with  all  its  royal  mantles  and  pontifi- 
cal stoles,  whereby,  from  nakedness  and  dismember- 
ment, we  are  organized  into  Polities,  into  nations,  and 
a  whole  co-operating  Mankind,  the  creation,  as  has 
here  been  often  irrefragably  evinced,  of  the  Tailor  alone  ? 
— What  too  are  all  Poets  and  moral  Teachers,  but  a 
species  of  Metaphorical  Tailors  ?  Touching  which 
high  Guild  the  greatest  living  Guild-brother  has  trium- 
phantly asked  us  :  '  Nay  if  thou  wilt  have  it,  who  but 
the  Poet  first  made  Gods  for  men  ;  brought  them  down 
to  us  ;  and  raised  us  up  to  them  ? ' 

"And  this  is  he,  whom  sitting  downcast,  on  the  hard 
basis  of  his  Shopboard,  the  world  treats  with  contumely, 
as  the  ninth  part  of  a  man  !  Look  up,  thou  much- 
injured  one,  look  up  with  the  kindling  eye  of  hope,  and 
prophetic  bodings  of  a  noble  better  time.  Too  long 
hast  thou  sat  there,  on  crossed  legs,  wearing  thy  ankle- 
joints  to  horn  ;  like  some  sacred  Anchorite,  or  Catholic 
Fakir,  doing  penance,  drawing  down  Heaven's  richest 
blessings,  for  a  world  that  scoffed  at  thee.  Be  of  hope  ! 
Already  streaks  of  blue  peer  through  our  clouds  ;  the 
thick  gloom  of  Ignorance  is  rolling  asunder,  and  it  will 
be  Day.  Mankind  will  repay  with  interest  their  long- 
accumulated  debt :  the  Anchorite  that  was  scoffed  at 
will  be  worshipped  ;  The  Fraction  will  become  not  an 
Integer  only,  but  a  Square  and  Cube.  With  astonish- 
ment the  world  will  recognize  that  the  Tailor  is  its 
Hierophant  and  Hierarch,  or  even  its  God, 


288  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

"As  I  stood  in  the  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia,  and  looked 
upon  these  Four-and-Twenty  Tailors,  sewing  and 
embroidering  that  rich  Cloth,  which  the  Sultan  sends 
yearly  for  the  Caaba  of  Mecca,!  thought  within  myself: 
How  many  other  Unholies  has  your  covering  Art  made 
holy,  besides  this  Arabian  Whinstone  ! 

"Still  more  touching  was  it  when,  turning  the  corner 
of  a  lane,  in  the  Scottish  Town  of  Edinburgh,  I  came 
upon  a  Signpost,  whereon  stood  written  that  such  and 
such  a  one  was  '  Breeches-Maker  to  his  Majesty  ; '  and 
stood  painted  the  Effigies  of  a  Pair  of  Leather  Breeches, 
and  between  the  knees  these  memorable  words,  Sic 
ITUR  AD  ASTRA.  Was  not  this  the  martyr  prison-speech 
of  a  Tailor  sighing  indeed  in  bonds,  yet  sighing  towards 
deliverance,  and  prophetically  appealing  to  a  better 
day  ?  A  day  of  justice  when  the  worth  of  Breeches 
would  be  revealed  to  man,  and  the  Scissors  become 
forever  venerable. 

"Neither,  perhaps,  may  I  now  say,  has  his  appeal 
been  altogether  in  vain.  It  was  in  this  high  moment, 
when  the  soul,  rent,  as  it  were,  and  shed  asunder,  is 
open  to  inspiring  influence,  that  I  first  conceived  this 
Work  on  Clothes  :  the  greatest  I  can  ever  hope  to  do  ; 
which  has  already,  after  long  retardations,  occupied,  and 
will  yet  occupy,  so  large  a  section  of  my  Life  ;  and  of 
which  the  Primary  and  simpler  Portion  may  here  find 
its  conclusion." 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  28g 


CHAPTER  XII. 

FAREWELL. 

So  have  we  endeavored,  from  the  enormous,  amor- 
phous Plum-pudding,  more  like  a  Scottish  Haggis, 
which  HerrTeufelsdrockh  had  kneaded  for  his  fellow 
mortals,  to  pick  out  the  choicest  Plums,  and  present 
them  separately  on  a  cover  of  our  own.  A  laborious, 
perhaps  a  thankless  enterprise ;  in  which,  however, 
something  of  hope  has  occasionally  cheered  us,  and  of 
which  we  can  now  wash  our  hands  not  altogether  with- 
out satisfaction.  If  hereby,  though  in  barbaric  wise, 
some  morsel  of  spiritual  nourishment  have  been  added 
to  the  scanty  ration  of  our  beloved  British  world,  what 
nobler  recompense  could  the  Editor  desire  ?  If  it  prove 
otherwise,  why  should  he  murmur  ?  Was  not  this  a 
Task  which  Destiny,  in  any  case,  had  appointed  him  ; 
which  having  now  done  with,  he  sees  his  general  Day's- 
work  so  much  the  lighter,  so  much  the  shorter  ? 

Of  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  it  seems  impossible  to  take 
leave  without  a  mingled  feeling  of  astonishment,  grati- 
tude and  disapproval.  Who  will  not  regret  that  talents, 
which  might  have  profited  in  the  higher  walks  of  Phi- 
losophy, or  in  Art  itself,  have  been  so  much  devoted  to 
a  rummaging  among  lumber-rooms  ;  nay,  too  often  to 
a  scraping  in  kennels,  where  lost  rings  and  diamond- 
necklaces  are  nowise  the  sole  conquest  ?  Regret  is  un- 
avoidable ;  yet  censure  were  loss  of  time.  To  cure  him 
of  his  mad  humors  British  Criticism  would  essay  in  vain  : 
enough  for  her  if  she  cant  by  vigilance,  prevent  the 
19 


ago  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

spreading  of  such  among  ourselves.  What  a  result, 
should  this  piebald,  entangled,  hyper-metaphorical  style 
of  writing,  not  to  say  of  thinking,  become  general 
among  our  Literary  men  !  As  it  might  so  easily  do. 
Thus  has  not  the  Editor  himself,  working  over  Teufels- 
drockh's  German,  lost  much  of  his  own  English  purity? 
Even  as  the  smaller  whirlpool  is  sucked  into  the  larger, 
and  made  to  whirl  along  with  it,  so  has  the  lesser  mind, 
in  this  instance,  been  forced  to  become  portion  of  the 
greater,  and,  like  it,  see  all  things  figuratively :  which 
habit,  time  and  assiduous  effort  will  be  needed  to  eradi- 
cate. 

Nevertheless,  wayward  as  our  professor  shows  him- 
self, is  there  any  reader  that  can  part  with  him  in 
declared  enmity  ?  Let  us  confess,  there  is  that  in  the 
wild,  much-suffering,  much-inflicting  man,  which  almost 
attaches  us.  His  attitude,  we  will  hope  and  believe, 
is  that  of  a  man  who  had  said  to  Cant,  Begone  ;  and 
to  Dilettantism,  Here  thou  canst  not  be  ;  and  to  Truth, 
Be  thou  in  place  of  all  to  me  :  a  man  who  had  man- 
fully defied  the  "Time-prince, "or  Devil,  to  his  face; 
nay  perhaps,  Hannibal-like,  was  mysteriously  conse- 
crated from  birth  to  that  warfare,  and  now  stood  minded 
to  wage  the  same,  by  all  weapons,  in  all  places,  at  all 
times.  In  such  a  cause,  any  soldier,  were  he  but  a 
Polack  Scythe-man,  shall  be  welcome. 

Still  the  question  returns  on  us  :  How  could  a  man 
occasionally  of  keen  insight,  not  without  keen  sense 
of  propriety,  who  had  real  Thoughts  to  communicate, 
resolve  to  emit  them  in  a  shape  bordering  so  closely 
on  the  absurd  ?  Which  question  he  were  wiser  than  the 
present  Editor  who  should  satisfactorily  answer.  Our 
conjecture  has  sometimes  been,  that  perhaps  Necessity 
as  well  as  Choice  was  concerned  in  it.  Seems  it  not 


SARTOR  ttESARTUS. 


291 


conceivable  that,  in  a  Life  like  our  Professor's,  where 
so  much  bountifully  given  by  Nature  had  in  Practice 
failed  and  misgone,  Literature  also  would  never  rightly 
prosper  :  that  striving  with  his  characteristic  vehemence 
to  paint  this  and  the  other  Picture,  and  ever  without 
success,  he  at  last  desperately  dashes  his  sponge,  full 
of  all  colors,  against  the  canvas,  to  try  whether  it  will 
paint  Foam  ?  With  all  his  stillness,  there  were  perhaps 
in  Teufelsdrockh  desperation  enough  for  this. 

A  second  conjecture  we  hazard  with  even  less  war- 
ranty. It  is,  that  Teufelsdrockh  is  not  without  some 
touch  of  the  universal  feeling,  a  wish  to  proselytize. 
How  often  already  have  we  paused,  uncertain  whether 
the  basis  of  this  so  enigmatic  nature  were  really  Stoicism 
and  Despair,  or  Love  and  Hope  only  seared  into  the 
figure  of  these  !  Remarkable,  moreover,  is  this  saying 
of  his  :  "  How  were  Friendship  possible?  In  mutual 
devotedness  to  the  Good  and  True  :  otherwise  impossi- 
ble ;  except  as  Armed  Neutrality,  or  hollow  Commer- 
cial League.  A  man,  be  the  Heavens  ever  praised,  is 
sufficient  for  himself ;  yet  were  ten  men,  united  in  Love, 
capable  of  being  and  of  doing  what  ten  thousand 
singly  would  fail  in.  Infinite  is  the  help  man  can 
yield  to  man. "  And  now  in  conjunction  therewith  con- 
sider this  other  :  "  It  is  the  Night  of  the  World,  and  still 
long  till  it  be  Day  :  we  wander  amid  the  glimmer  of 
smoking  ruins,  and  the  Sun  and  the  Stars  of  Heaven 
are  as  if  blotted  out  for  a  season  and  two  immeasurable 
Phantoms,  HYPOCRISY  and  ATHEISM,  with  the  Gowl  SEN- 
SUALITY, stalk  abroad  over  the  Earth,  and  call  it  theirs  : 
well  at  ease  are  the  Sleepers  for  whom  Existence  is  a 
shallow  Dream." 

But  what  of  the  awestruck  Wakeful  who  find  it  a 
Reality  ?  Should  not  these  unite ;  since  even  an 


392  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

authentic  Spectre  is  not  visible  to  Two  ? — In  which  case 
were  this  enormous  Clothes- Volume  properly  an  enor- 
mous pitchpan,  which  our  Teufelsdrockh  in  his  lone 
watchtower  had  kindled,  that  it  might  flame  far  and 
wide  through  the  Night,  and  many  a  disconsolately 
wandering  spirit  be  guided  thither  to  a  Brother's  bosom  ! 
— We  say  as  before,  with  all  his  malign  Indifference, 
who  knows  what  mad  Hopes  this  man  may  harbor? 

Meanwhile  there  is  one  fact  to  be  stated  here,  which 
harmonizes  ill  with  such  conjectures  ;  and,  indeed, 
were  Teufelsdrockh  made  like  other  men,  might  as  good 
as  altogether  subvert  it.  Namely,  that  while  the  Beacon- 
fire  blazed  its  brightest,  the  Watchman  had  quitted  it  ; 
that  no  pilgrim  could  now  ask  him  :  Watchman,  what 
of  the  Night  ?  Professor  Teufelsdrockh,  be  it  known, 
is  no  longer  visibly  present  at  Weissnichtwo,  but  again 
to  all  appearance  lost  in  space  !  Some  time  ago,  the 
Hofrath  Heuschrecke  was  pleased  to  favor  us  with 
another  copious  Epistle  ;  wherein  much  is  said  about 
the  "Population-Institute;"  much  repeated  in  praise 
of  the  Paper-bag  Documents,  the  hieroglyphic  nature 
of  which  our  Hofrath  still  seems  not  to  have  surmised  ; 
and  lastly,  the  strangest  occurrence  communicated,  to 
us  for  the  first  time,  in  the  following  paragraph  : 

"  Ew.  Wohlgeboren  will  have  seen  from  the  public 
Prints,  with  what  affectionate  and  hitherto  fruitless  so- 
licitude Weissnichtwo  regards  the  disappearance  of  her 
Sage.  Might  but  the  united  voice  of  Germany,  pre- 
vail on  him  to  return  ;  nay,  could  we  but  so  much  as 
elucidate  for  ourselves  by  what  mystery  he  went  away  ! 
But,  alas,  old  Lieschen  experiences  or  affects  the  pro- 
foundest  deafness,  the  profoundest  ignorance  :  in  the 
Wahngasse  all  lies  swept,  silent,  sealed  up  ;  the  Privy 
Council  itself  can  hitherto  elicit  no  answer. 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  293 

"It  had  been  remarked  that  while  the  agitating 
news  of  those  Parisian  Three  Days  flew  from  mouth  to 
mouth,  and  dinned  every  ear  in  Weissnichtwo,  Herr 
Teufelsdrockh  was  not  known  at  the  Gans  or  elsewhere, 
to  have  spoken,  for  a  whole  week,  any  syllable  except 
once  these  three  :  Es  geht  an  (It  is  beginning).  Shortly 
after,  as  Ew.  Wohlgeboren  knows,  was  the  public  tran- 
quillity here,  as  in  Berlin,  threatened  by  a  Sedition  of 
the  Tailors.  Nor  did  there  want  Evil-wishers,  or  per- 
haps mere  desperate  Alarmists,  who  asserted  that  the 
closing  Chapter  of  the  Clothes-Volume  was  to  blame. 
In  this  appalling  crisis,  the  serenity  of  our  Philosopher 
was  indescribable ;  nay,  perhaps  through  one  hum- 
ble individual,  something  thereof  might  pass  into 
the  Rath  (Council)  itself,  and  so  contribute  to  the  coun- 
try's deliverance.  The  Tailors  are  now  entirely  pacifi- 
cated. — 

' '  To  neither  of  these  two  incidents  can  I  attribute  our 
loss  :  yet  still  comes  there  the  shadow  of  a  suspicion 
out  of  Paris  and  its  Politics.  For  example  when  the 
Saint- Simonian  Society  transmitted  its  Proposition  hither, 
and  the  whole  Gans  was  one  vast  cackle  of  laughter, 
lamentation  and  astonishment,  our  Sage  sat  mute  ;  and 
at  the  end  of  the  third  evening  said  merely  :  '  Here 
also  are  men  who  have  discovered,  not  without  amaze- 
ment, that  Man  is  still  Man  ;  of  which  high,  long-for- 
gotten Truth  you  already  see  them  make  a  false  appli- 
cation.'  Since  then,  as  has  been  ascertained  by  exam- 
ination of  the  Post-Director,  there  passed  at  least  one 
Letter  with  its  Answer  between  the  Messieurs  Bazard- 
Enfantin  and  our  Professor  himself  ;  of  what  tenor  can 
now  only  be  conjectured.  On  the  fifth  night  following, 
he  was  seen  for  the  last  time  I 

"Has  this  invaluable  man,  so  obnoxious  to  most  of 


294  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

the  hostile  Sects  that  convulse  our  Era,  been  spirited 
away  by  certain  of  their  emissaries  ;  or  did  he  go  forth 
voluntarily  to  their  headquarters  to  confer  with  them 
and  confront  them  ?  Reason  we  have,  at  least  of  a 
negative  sort,  to  believe  the  Lost  still  living ;  our 
widowed  heart  also  whispers  that  ere  long  he  will  him- 
self give  a  sign.  Otherwise,  indeed,  his  archives  must, 
one  day,  be  opened  by  Authority  ;  where  much,  per- 
haps the  Palingenesie  itself,  is  thought  to  be  reposited." 

Thus  far  the  Hofrath  :  who  vanishes,  as  is  his  wont, 
too  like  an  Ignis  Fatuus,  leaving  the  dark  still  darker. 

So  that  Teufelsdrockh's  public  History  were  not  done, 
then,  or  reduced  to  an  even,  unromantic,  tenor  :  nay, 
perhaps  the  better  part  thereof  were  only  beginning  ? 
We  stand  in  a  region  of  conjectures,  where  substance 
has  melted  into  shadow,  and  one  cannot  be  distin- 
guished from  the  other.  May  time,  which  solves  or 
suppresses  all  problems,  throw  glad  light  on  this  also  ! 
Our  own  private  conjecture,  now  amounting  almost  to 
certainty,  is  that,  safe-moored  in  some  stillest  obscurity, 
not  to  lie  always  still,  Teufelsdrockh  is  actually  in 
London  ! 

Here,  however,  can  the  present  Editor,  with  an  am- 
brosial joy  as  of  over-weariness  falling  into  sleep,  lay 
down  his  pen.  Well  does  he  know,  if  human  testi- 
mony be  worth  aught,  that  to  innumerable  British 
readers  likewise,  this  is  a  satisfying  consummation  ; 
that  innumerable  British  readers  consider  him,  during 
these  current  months,  but  as  an  uneasy  interruption  to 
their  ways  of  thought  and  digestion  ;  and  indicate  so 
much,  not  without  a  certain  irritancy  and  even  spoken 
invective.  For  which,  as  for  other  mercies,  ought  not 
he  to  thank  the  Upper  Powers  ?  To  one  and  all  of  you, 


SARTOR  RESARTUS.  295 

O  irritated  readers,  he,  with  outstretched  arms  and 
open  heart,  will  wave  a  kind  farewell.  Thou  too, 
miraculous  Entity,  who  namest  thyself  YORKE  and 
OLIVER,  and  with  thy  vivacities  and  genialities,  with 
thy  ail-too  Irish  mirth  and  madness,  and  odor  of  palled 
punch,  makes  such  strange  work,  farewell ;  long  as 
thou  canst  fare-weft !  Have  we  not,  in  the  course  of 
Eternity,  traveled  some  months  of  our  Life-journey  in 
partial  sight  of  one  another  ;  have  we  not  existed  to- 
gether, though  in  a  state  of  quarrel  ? 


APPENDIX. 


THIS  questionable  little  Book  was  undoubtedly  written 
among  the  mountain  solitudes,  in  1831  ;  but,  owing  to 
impediments  natural  and  accidental,  could  not,  for 
seven  years  more,  appear  as  a  Volume  in  England  ; — 
and  had  at  last  to  clip  itself  in  pieces,  and  be  content 
to  struggle  out,  bit  by  bit,  in  some  courageous  Magazine 
that  offered.  Whereby  now,  to  certain  idly  curious 
readers,  and  even  to  myself  till  I  make  study,  the  in- 
significant but  at  last  irritating  question,  What  its  real 
history  and  chronology  are,  is,  if  not  insoluble,  con- 
siderably involved  in  haze. 

To  the  first  English  Edition,  1838,  which  an  Ameri- 
can, or  two  Americans,  had  now  opened  the  way  for, 
there  was  slightingly  prefixed,  under  the  title  ' '  Testi- 
monies of  Authors,"  some  straggle  of  real  documents, 
which,  now  that  I  find  it  again,  sets  the  matter  into 
clear  light  and  sequence  ; — and  shall  here,  for  removal 
of  idle  stumbling-blocks  and  nugatory  guessings  from 
the  path  of  every  reader,  be  reprinted  as  it  stood. 
(Author's  Note  of  1868.) 


TESTIMONIES  OF  AUTHORS. 
I.     HIGHEST  CLASS,   BOOKSELLER'S   TASTER. 

Taster  to  Bookseller. — "The  Author  of  Teufelsdrockh 
is  a  person  of  talent ;  his  work  displays  here  and  there 

297 


298  APPENDIX. 

some  felicity  of  thought  and  expression,  considerable 
fancy  and  knowledge  :  but  whether  or  not  it  would 
take  with  the  public  seems  doubtful.  For  aj'eu  d'esprit 
of  that  kind  it  is  too  long  ;  it  would  have  suited  better 
as  an  essay  or  article  than  as  a  volume.  The  Author 
has  no  great  tact ;  his  wit  is  frequently  heavy  ;  and  re- 
minds one  of  the  German  Baron  who  took  to  leaping  on 
tables,  and  answered  that  he  was  learning  to  be  lively. 
Is  the  work  a  translation  ?  " 

Bookseller  to  Editor.  —  "Allow  me  to  say  that  such  a 
writer  requires  only  a  little  more  tact  to  produce  a 
popular  as  \vell  as  an  able  work.  Directly  on  receiving 
your  permission,  I  sent  your  MS.  to  a  gentleman  in  the 
highest  class  of  men  of  letters,  and  an  accomplished 
German  scholar :  I  now  enclose  you  his  opinion,  which, 
you  may  rely  upon  it,  is  a  just  one ;  and  I  have  too 
high  an  opinion  of  your  good  sense  to  "  etc.,  etc. — MS. 
(Penes  nos),  London,  \  ith  September,  1831. 

II.  CRITIC  OF  THE  SUN. 

"  Fraser's  Magazine  exhibits  the  usual  brilliancy, 
and  also  the  "  etc.  "  Sartor  Resartus  is  what  old  Den- 
nis used  to  call  '  a  heap  of  clotted  nonsense/  mixed, 
however,  here  and  there,  with  passages  marked  by 
thought  and  striking  poetic  vigor.  But  what  does  the 
writer  mean  by  '  Baphometic  fire-baptism  '?  Why  can- 
not he  lay  aside  his  pedantry,  and  write  so  as  to  make 
himself  generally  intelligible?  We  quote  by  way  of 
curiosity  a  sentence  from  the  Sartor  Resartus  ;  which 
may  be  read  either  backwards  or  forwards,  for  it  is 
equally  intelligible  either  way  :  indeed,  by  beginning 
at  the  tail,  and  so  working  up  to  the  head,  we  think  the 
reader  will  stand  the  fairest  chance  of  getting  at  its 


APPENDIX.  299 

meaning  :  '  The  fire-baptized  soul,  long  so  scathed  and 
thunder-riven,  here  feels  its  own  freedom  ;  which  feel- 
ing is  its  Baphometic  baptism  :  the  citadel  of  its  whole 
kingdom  it  has  thus  gained  by  assault,  and  will  keep 
inexpugnable ;  outwards  from  which  the  remaining 
dominions,  not  indeed  without  hard  battering,  will 
doubtless  by  degrees  be  conquered  and  pacificated.' 
Here  is  a" — — Sun  Newspaper,  ist  April,  1834. 

III.  NORTH-AMERICAN  REVIEWER. 

"After  a  careful  survey  of  the  whole  ground, 

our  belief  is  that  no  such  persons  as  Professor  Teufels- 
drockh  or  Counselor  Heuschrecke  ever  existed  ;  that 
the  six  Paper-bags,  with  their  China-ink  inscriptions 
and  multifarious  contents,  are  a  mere  figment  of  the 
brain  ;  that  the  '  present  Editor '  is  the  only  person 
who  has  ever  written  upon  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ; 
and  that  the  Sartor  Resartus  is  the  only  treatise  that  has 
yet  appeared  upon  that  subject ; — in  short,  that  the 
whole  account  of  the  origin  of  the  work  before  us, 
which  the  supposed  Editor  relates  with  so  much  gravity, 
and  of  which  we  have  given  a  brief  abstract,  is,  in 
plain  English,  a  hum. 

"Without  troubling  our  readers  at  any  great  length 
with  our  reasons  for  entertaining  these  suspicions,  we 
may  remark,  that  the  absence  of  all  other  information 
on  the  subject,  except  what  is  contained  in  the  work, 
is  itself  a  fact  of  a  most  significant  character.  The 
whole  German  press,  as  well  as  the  particular  one  where 
the  work  purports  to  have  been  printed,  seems  to  be 
under  the  control  of  S tills  chweig  en  and  Co. — Silence  and 
Company.  If  the  Clothes-Philosophy  and  its  author 
are  making  so  great  a  sensation  throughout  Germany 


300  APPENDIX. 

as  is  pretended,  how  happens  it  that  the  only 
notice  we  have  of  the  fact  is  contained  in  a  few  num- 
bers of  a  monthly  Magazine  published  at  London  ? 
How  happens  it  that  no  intelligence  about  the  matter 
has  come  out  directly  to  this  country  ?  We  pique  our- 
selves here  in  New  England  upon  knowing  at  least  as 
much  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  literary  way  in  the  old 
Dutch  Mother-land  as  our  brethren  of  the  fast-anchored 
Isle ;  but  thus  far  we  have  no  tidings  whatever  of  the 
'  extensive  close-printed  close-meditated  volume,  'which 
forms  the  subject  of  this  pretended  commentary. 
Again,  we  would  respectfully  inquire  of  the  '  present 
Editor  '  upon  what  part  of  the  map  of  Germany  we  are 
to  look  for  the  city  of  Weissnichtwo — '  Know-not-where, 
— at  which  place  the  work  is  supposed  to  have  been 
printed,  and  the  Author  to  have  resided.  It  has  been 
our  fortune  to  visit  several  portions  of  the  German  ter- 
ritory, and  to  examine  pretty  carefully,  at  different 
times  and  for  various  purposes,  maps  of  the  whole ; 
but  we  have  no  recollection  of  any  such  place.  We 
suspect  that  the  city  of  Know-not-where  might  be  called, 
with  at  least  as  much  propriety,  Nobody-knows-where, 
and  is  to  be  found  in  the  kingdom  of  Nowhere.  Again, 
the  village  otEntepfuhl — '  Duck-pond ' — where  the  sup- 
posed Author  of  the  work  is  said  to  have  passed  his 
youth,  and  that  of  Hinterschlag,  where  he  had  his 
education,  are  equally  foreign  to  our  geography.  Duck- 
ponds  enough  there  undoubtedly  are  in  almost  every 
village  in  Germany,  as  the  traveler  in  that  country 
knows  too  well  to  his  cost,  but  any  particular  village 
denominated  Duck-pond  is  to  us  altogether  terra  incog- 
nita. The  names  of  the  personages  are  not  less  singular 
than  those  of  the  places.  Who  can  refrain  from  a  smile 
at  the  yoking  together  of  such  a  pair  of  appellatives  as 


APPENDIX.  301 

Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  ?  The  supposed  bearer  of  this 
strange  title  is  represented  as  admitting,  in  his  pre- 
tended autobiography,  that  'he  had  searched  to  no  pur- 
pose through  all  the  Heralds'  books  in  and  without  the 
German  empire,  and  through  all  manner  of  Subscribers'- 
lists,  Militia-rolls,  and  other  Name-catalogues,'  but  had 
nowhere  been  able  to  find  '  the  name  Teufelsdrockh, 
except  as  appended  to  his  own  person. '  We  can  readily 
believe  this,  and  we  doubt  very  much  whether  any 
Christian  parent  would  think  of  condemning  a  son  to 
carry  through  life  the  burden  of  so  unpleasant  a  title. 
That  of  Counselor  Heuschrecke — 'Grasshopper' — 
though  not  offensive,  looks  much  more  like  a  piece  of 
fancy  work  than  a  '  fair  business  transaction.'  The 
same  may  be  said  of  Blumine — '  Flower-Goddess  ' — the 
heroine  of  the  fable  ;  and  so  of  the  rest. 

"In  short,  our  private  opinion  is,  as  we  have  re- 
marked, that  the  whole  story  of  a  correspondence  with 
Germany,  a  university  of  Nobody-knows-where,  a  Pro- 
fessor of  Things  in  General,  a  Counselor  Grasshopper, 
a  Flower-Goddess  Blumine,  and  so  forth,  has  about  as 
much  foundation  in  truth  as  the  late  entertaining  ac- 
count of  Sir  John  Herschel's  discoveries  in  the  moon. 
Fictions  of  this  kind  are,  however,  not  uncommon,  and 
ought  not,  perhaps,  to  be  condemned  with  too  much 
severity  ;  but  we  are  not  sure  that  we  can  exercise  the 
same  indulgence  in  regard  to  the  attempt,  which  seems 
to  be  made  to  mislead  the  public  as  to  the  substance  of 
the  work  before  us,  and  its  pretended  German  original. 
Both  purport,  as  we  have  seen,  to  be  upon  the  subject 
of  Clothes,  or  dress.  Clothes,  their  Origin  and  Influence, 
is  the  title  of  the  supposed  German  treatise  of  Professor 
Teufelsdrockh,  and  the  rather  odd  name  of  Sartor  Re- 
sartus — the  Tailor  Patched — which  the  present  Editor 


302  APPENDIX. 

has  affixed  to  his  pretended  commentary,  seems  to  look 
the  same  way.  But  though  there  is  a  good  deal  of  re- 
mark throughout  the  work  in  a  half-serious,  half-comic 
style  upon  dress,  it  seems  to  be  in  reality  a  treatise  upon 
the  great  science  of  Things  in  General,  which  Teufels- 
drockh  is  supposed  to  have  professed  at  the  university 
of  Nobody-knows-where.  Now,  without  intending  to 
adopt  a  too  rigid  standard  of  morals,  we  own  that  we 
doubt  a  little  the  propriety  of  offering  to  the  public  a 
treatise  on  Things  in  General,  under  the  name  and  in 
the  form  of  an  Essay  on  Dress.  For  ourselves,  ad- 
vanced as  we  unfortunately  are  in  the  journey  of  life, 
far  beyond  the  period  when  dress  is  practically  a  mat- 
ter of  interest,  we  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  that  the 
real  subject  of  the  work  is  to  us  more  attractive  than 
the  ostensible  one.  But  this  is  probably  not  the  case 
with  the  mass  of  readers.  To  the  younger  portion  of 
the  community,  which  constitutes  everywhere  the  very 
great  majority,  the  subject  of  dress  is  one  of  intense 
and  paramount  importance.  An  author  who  treats  it, 
appeals  like  the  poet,  to  the  young  men  and  maidens — 
virginibus  puerisque — and  calls  upon  them,  by  all  the 
motives  which  habitually  operate  most  strongly  upon 
their  feelings,  to  buy  his  book.  When,  after  opening 
their  purses  for  this  purpose,  they  have  carried  home  the 
work  in  triumph,  expecting  to  find  in  it  some  particular 
instruction  in  regard  to  the  tying  of  their  neckcloths, 
or  the  cut  of  their  corsets,  and  meet  with  nothing  bet- 
ter than  a  dissertation  on  Things  in  General,  they  will 
— to  use  the  mildest  term — not  be  in  very  good  humor. 
If  the  last  improvements  in  legislation,  which  we  have 
made  in  this  country,  should  have  found  their  way  to 
England,  the  author,  we  think,  would  stand  some 
chance  of  being  Lynched.  Whether  his  object  in  this 


APPENDIX. 


3°3 


piece  of  supercherie  be  merely  pecuniary  profit,  or 
whether  he  takes  a  malicious  pleasure  in  quizzing  the 
Dandies,  we  shall  not  undertake  to  say.  In  the  latter 
part  of  the  work,  he  devotes  a  separate  chapter  to  this 
class  of  persons,  from  the  tenor  of  which  we  should  be 
disposed  to  conclude,  that  he  would  consider  any  mode 
of  divesting  them  of  their  property  very  much  in  the 
nature  of  a  spoiling  of  the  Egyptians. 

"The  only  thing  about  the  work,  tending  to  prove 
that  it  is  what  it  purports  to  be,  a  commentary  on  a 
real  German  treatise,  is  the  style,  which  is  a  sort  of 
Babylonish  dialect,  not  destitute,  it  is  true,  of  richness, 
vigor,  and  at  times  a  sort  of  singular  felicity  of  ex- 
pression, but  very  strongly  tinged  throughout  with  the 
peculiar  idiom  of  the  German  language.  This  quality 
in  the  style,  however,  may  be  a  mere  result  of  a  great 
familiarity  with  German  literature  ;  and  we  cannot, 
therefore,  look  upon  it  as  in  itself  decisive,  still  less  as 
outweighing  so  much  evidence  of  an  opposite  char- 
acter."— North- American  Review,  No.  89,  October,  1835. 

IV.  NEW-ENGLAND  EDITORS. 

"  The  Editors  have  been  induced,  by  the  express  de- 
sire of  many  persons,  to  collect  the  following  sheets  out 
of  the  ephemeral  pamphlets  *  in  which  they  first  ap- 
peared, under  the  conviction  that  they  contain  in  them- 
selves the  assurance  of  a  longer  date. 

"The  Editors  have  no  expectation  that  this  little 
Work  will  have  a  sudden  and  general  popularity.  They 
will  not  undertake,  as  there  is  no  need,  to  justify  the  gay 
costume  in  which  the  Author  delights  to  dress  his 
thoughts,  or  the  German  idioms  with  which  he  has 

*Fraser's  (London)  Magazine,  1833-4. 


304  APPENDIX. 

sportively  sprinkled  his  pages.  It  is  his  humor  to  ad- 
vance the  gravest  speculations  upon  the  gravest  topics 
in  a  quaint  and  burlesque  style.  If  his  masquerade 
offend  any  of  his  audience,  to  that  degree  that  they  will 
not  hear  what  he  has  to  say,  it  may  chance  to  draw 
others  to  listen  to  his  wisdom  ;  and  what  work  of  im- 
agination can -hope  to  please  all?  But  we  will  venture 
to  remark  that  the  distaste  excited  by  these  peculiarities 
in  some  readers  is  greatest  at  first,  and  is  soon  forgot- 
ten ;  and  that  the  foreign  dress  and  aspect  of  the  Work 
are  quite  superficial,  and  cover  a  genuine  Saxon  heart. 
We  believe,  no  book  has  been  published  for  many 
years,  written  in  a  more  sincere  style  of  idiomatic 
English,  or  which  discovers  an  equal  mystery  over 
all  the  riches  of  the  language.  The  Author  makes 
ample  amends  for  the  occasional  eccentricity  of  his 
genius,  not  only  by  frequent  bursts  of  pure  splendor, 
but  by  the  wit  and  sense  which  never  fail  him. 

"  But  what  will  chiefly  commend  the  Book  to  the  dis- 
cerning reader  is  the  manifest  design  of  the  work,  which 
is,  a  Criticism  upon  the  Spirit  of  the  Age — we  had  al- 
most said,  of  the  hour — in  which  we  live;  exhibiting 
in  the  most  just  and  novel  light  the  present  aspects  of 
Religion,  Politics,  Literature,  Arts,  and  Social  Life. 
Under  all  his  gayety  the  Writer  has  an  earnest  meaning, 
and  discovers  an  insight  into  the  manifold  wants  and 
tendencies  of  human  nature,  which  is  very  rare  among 
our  popular  authors.  The  philanthropy  and  the  purity 
of  moral  sentiment,  which  inspire  the  work,  will  find 
their  way  to  the  heart  of  every  lover  of  virtue. "  Preface 
to  Sartor  Resartus  ;.  Boston,  1835,  1837. 

SUNT,    FUERUNT   VEL    FlJERE. 

London,  $Qth  June,  1838. 


SUMMARY. 

BOOK  I. 

CHAP.   I.     Preliminary. 

No  Philosophy  of  Clothes  yet,  notwithstanding  all  our 
Science.  Strangely  forgotten  that  Man  is  by  nature  a 
naked  animal.  The  English  mind  ail-too  practically 
absorbed  for  any  such  inquiry.  Not  so,  deep-thinking 
Germany.  Advantage  of  Speculation  having  free  course. 
Editor  receives  from  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  his  new 
Work  on  Clothes,  (p.  5. ) 

CHAP.  II.     Editorial  Difficulties. 

How  to  make  known  Teufelsdrockh  and  his  Book  to 
English  readers  ;  especially  such  a  book  ?  Editor  re- 
ceives from  the  Hofrath  Heuschrecke  a  letter  promising 
Biographic  Documents.  Negotiations  with  Oliver 
Yorke,  Sartor  Resartus  conceived.  Editor's  assurances 
and  advice  to  his  British  reader,  (p.  n.) 

CHAP.   III.     Reminiscences. 

Teufelsdrockh  at  Weissnichtwo.  Professor  of  Things 
in  General  at  the  University  there  :  Outward  aspect  and 
character ;  memorable  coffee-house  utterances  ;  domicile 
and  watch-tower  :  Sights  thence  of  City-life  by  day  and 

2Q 


306  SUMMARY. 

by  night ;  with  reflections  thereon.  Old  'Liza  and  her 
ways.  Character  of  Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  and  his  rela- 
tion to  Teufelsdrockh.  (p.  16.) 

CHAP.   IV.      Characteristics. 

Teufelsdrockh  and  his  Work  on  Clothes  :  Strange  free- 
dom of  speech  ;  transcendentalism  ;  force  of  insight  and 
expression  ;  multifarious  learning  :  Style  poetic,  un- 
couth :  Comprehensiveness  of  his  humor  and  moral 
feeling.  How  the  Editor  once  saw  him  laugh.  Differ- 
ent kinds  of  Laughter  and  their  significance,  (p.  30.) 

CHAP.  V.      The  World  in  Clothes. 

Futile  cause-and-effect  Philosophies.  Teufelsdrockh's 
Orbis  Vestitus.  Clothes  first  invented  for  the  sake  of 
Ornament.  Picture  of  our  progenitor,  the  Aboriginal 
Savage.  Wonders  of  growth  and  progress  in  mankind's 
history.  Man  defined  as  a  Tool-using  Animal,  (p.  37.) 

CHAP.   VI.     Aprons. 

Divers  Aprons  in  the  world  with  divers  uses.  The 
Military  and  Police  Establishment  Society's  working 
Apron.  The  Episcopal  Apron  with  its  corner  tucked 
in.  The  Laystall.  Journalists  now  our  only  Kings 
and  Clergy,  (p.  44.) 

CHAP.  VII.     Miscellaneous-Historical. 

How  Men  and  Fashions  come  and  go.  German  Cos- 
tume in  the  fifteenth  century.  By  what  strange  chances 
do  we  live  in  History !  The  costume  of  Bolivar's 
Cavalry,  (p.  47.) 


SUMMARY.  307 

CHAP.   VIII.      Tlie  World  out  of  Clothes. 

Teufelsdrockh's  Theorem,  "Society  founded  upon 
Cloth ;  "  his  Method,  Intuition  quickened  by  Experi- 
ence. The  mysterious  question,  Who  am  I  ?  Philoso- 
phic systems  all  at  fault  :  A  deeper  meditation  has  al- 
ways taught,  here  and  there  an  individual,  that  all 
visible  things  are  appearances  only  ;  but  also  emblems 
and  revelations  of  God.  Teufelsdrockh  first  comes 
upon  the  question  of  Clothes :  Baseness  to  which 
Clothing  may  bring  us.  (p.  52.) 

CHAP.   IX.     Adamitism. 

The  universal  utility  of  Clothes,  and  their  higher 
mystic  virtue,  illustrated.  Conception  of  Mankind 
stripped  naked;  and  immediate  consequent  dissolu- 
tion of  civilized  Society,  (p.  59.) 

CHAP.  X.    Pure  Reason. 

A  Naked  World  possibly,  nay  actually  exists,  under 
the  clothed  one.  Man,  in  the  eye  of  Pure  Reason,  a 
visible  God's  Presence.  The  beginning  of  all  wisdom, 
to  look  fixedly  on  Clothes  till  they  become  transparent 
Wonder,  the  basis  of  Worship  :  Perennial  in  man. 
Modern  Sciolists  who  cannot  wonder  :  Teufelsdrockh's 
contempt  for,  and  advice  to  them.  (p.  65.) 

CHAP.  XL    Prospective. 

Nature  not  an  Aggregate,  but  a  Whole.  All  visible 
things  are  emblems,  Clothes  ;  and  exist  for  a  time  only. 
The  grand  scope  of  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes.  Bio- 


308  SUMMARY. 

graphic  Documents  arrive.  Letter  from  Heuschrecke 
on  the  importance  of  Biography.  Heterogeneous  char- 
acter of  the  documents  :  Editor  sorely  perplexed  ;  but 
desperately  grapples  with  his  work.  (p.  72.) 

BOOK  II. 
CHAP.   I.     Genesis. 

OLD  Andreas  Futteral  and  Gretchen  his  wife ;  their 
quiet  home.  Advent  of  a  mysterious  stranger,  who 
deposits  with  them  a  young  infant,  the  future  Herr 
Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh.  After-yearnings  of  the  youth 
for  his  unknown  Father.  Sovereign  power  of  Names 
and  Naming.  Diogenes  a  flourishing  Infant  (p.  82. ) 

CHAP.   II.    Idyllic. 

Happy  Childhood  !  Entepfuhl:  Sights,  hearings  and 
experiences  of  the  boy  Teufelsdrockh  ;  their  manifold 
teaching.  Education  ;  what  it  can  do,  what  cannot 
Obedience  our  universal  duty  and  destiny.  Gneschen 
sees  the  good  Gretchen  pray.  (p.  91.) 

CHAP.   III.    Pedagogy. 

Teufelsdrockh's  School.  His  Education.  How  the 
ever-flowing  Kuhbach  speaks  of  Time  and  Eternity. 
The  Hinterschlag  Gymnasium:  rude  Boys;  and  pedant 
Professors.  The  need  of  true  Teachers,  and  their  due 
recognition.  Father  Andreas  dies;  and  Teufelsdrockh 
learns  the  secret  of  his  birth  :  His  reflections  thereof. 
The  Nameless  University.  Statistics  of  Imposture 
much  wanted.  Bitter  fruits  of  Rationalism  :  Teufels- 
drockh's religious  difficulties.  The  young  Englishman 
Herr  Towgood.  Modern  Friendship,  (p.  101.) 


SUMMARY.  36$ 

CHAP.   IV.      Getting  under  Way. 

The  grand  thaumaturgic  Art  of  Thought.  Difficulty 
in  fitting  Capability  to  Opportunity,  or  of  getting  under 
way.  The  advantage  of  Hunger  and  Bread-Studies. 
Teufelsdrockh  has  to  enact  the  stern  monodrama  of  No 
object  and  no  rest.  Sufferings  as  Auscultator.  Given 
up  as  a  man  of  genius.  Zahdarm  House.  Intolerable 
presumption  of  young  men.  Irony  and  its  conse- 
quences. Teufelsdrockh's  Epitaph  on  Count  Zahdarm. 
(p.  119.) 

CHAP.  V.  Romance. 

Teufelsdrockh  gives  up  his  Profession.  The  heavenly 
mystery  of  Love.  Teufelsdrockh's  feeling  of  worship 
towards  women.  First  and  only  love.  Blumine. 
Happy  hearts,  and  free  tongues.  The  infinite  nature 
of  Fantasy.  Love's  joyful  progress  ;  sudden  dissolu- 
tion ;  and  final  catastrophe,  (p.  133.) 

CHAP.  VI.  Sorrows  of  Teufelsdrockh. 

Teufelsdrockh's  demeanor  thereupon.  Turns  pilgrim. 
A  last  wistful  look  on  native  Entepfuhl:  Sunset  amongst 
primitive  Mountains.  Basilisk-glance  of  the  Barouche- 
and-four.  Thoughts  on  View-hunting.  Wanderings 
and  Sorrowings,  (p.  148.) 

CHAP.  VII.  The  Everlasting  No. 

Loss  of  Hope,  and  of  Belief.  Profit-and-loss  Philos- 
ophy. Teufelsdrockh  in  his  darkness  and  despair  still 
clings  to  Truth  and  follows  Duty.  Inexpressible  pains 
and  fears  of  Unbelief.  Fever-crisis  :  Protest  against 
the  Everlasting  No  :  Baphometic  Fire-baptism,  (p.  159. 


310  SUMMARY. 

CHAP.   VIII.    Center  of  Indifference. 

Teufelsdrockh  turns  now  outwardly  to  the  Not-me ; 
and  finds  wholesomer  food.  Ancient  Cities  :  Mystery 
of  their  origin  and  growth  :  Invisible  inheritances  and 
possessions.  Power  and  virtue  of  a  true  Book.  Wag- 
ram  Battlefield:  War.  Great  Scenes  beheld  by  the  Pil- 
grim :  Great  Events,  and  Great  Men.  Napoleon,  a 
divine  missionary,  preaching  La  carriere  otiverle  aux 
talens.  Teufelsdrockh  at  the  North  Cape :  Modern 
means  of  self-defense.  Gunpowder  and  duelling.  The 
Pilgrim,  despising  his  miseries,  reaches  the  Center  of 
Indifference,  (p.  168.) 

CHAP.   IX.     The  Everlasting  Yea. 

Temptations  in  the  Wilderness  :  Victory  over  the 
Tempter.  Annihilation  of  self.  Belief  in  God,  and  love 
to  man.  The  Origin  of  Evil,  a  problem  ever  requiring  to 
be  solved  anew  :  Teufelsdrockh's  solution.  Love  of 
Happiness  a  vain  whim  :  A  Higher  in  man  than  Love 
of  Happiness.  The  Everlasting  Yea.  Worship  of  Sor- 
row. Voltaire ;  his  task  now  fi-  ished.  Conviction 
worthless,  impossible,  without  Conduct.  The  true 
Ideal,  the  Actual  :  Up  and  work  !  (p.  181.) 

CHAP.  X.    Pause. 

Conversion  ;  a  spiritual  attainment  peculiar  to  the 
modern  Era.  Teufelsdrockh  accepts  Authorship  as  his 
divine  calling.  The  scope  of  the  command  Thou  shalt 
not  steal. — Editor  begins  to  suspect  the  authenticity  of 
the  Biographical  documents  ;  and  abandons  them  fpr 


SUMMARY. 


the  great  Clothes  volume.  Result  of  the  preceding  ten 
Chapters  :  Insight  into  the  character  of  Teufelsdrockh: 
His  fundamental  beliefs,  and  how  he  was  forced  to  seek 
and  find  them.  (p.  195.) 


BOOK  III. 

CHAP.    I.   Incident  in  Modern  History. 

Story  of  George  Fox  the  Quaker  ;  and  his  perennial 
suit  of  Leather.  A  man  God-possessed,  witnessing  for 
spiritual  freedom  and  manhood,  (p.  204.) 

CHAP.   II.   Church-Clothes. 

Church-Clothes  defined  ;  the  Forms  under  which  the 
Religious  Principle  is  temporarily  embodied.  Outward 
Religion  originates  by  Society  :  Society  becomes  pos- 
sible by  Religion.  The  condition  of  Church-Clothes  in 
our  time.  (p.  211.) 

CHAP.  III.  Symbols. 

The  benignant  efficacies  of  Silence  and  Secrecy. 
Symbols  ;  revelations  of  the  Infinite  in  the  Finite  :  Man 
everywhere  encompassed  by  them  ;  lives  and  works  by 
them.  Theory  of  Motive-millwrights,  a  false  account 
of  human  nature.  Symbols  of  an  extrinsic  value ;  as 
Banners,  Standards  :  Of  intrinsic  value  ;  as  Works  of 
Art,  Lives  and  Deaths  of  Heroic  men.  Religious  Sym- 
bols ;  Christianity.  Symbols  hallowed  by  Time ;  but 
finally  defaced  and  desecrated.  Many  superannuated 
Symbols  in  our  time,  needing  removal,  (p.  215.) 


312  SUMMARY. 

CHAP.   IV.  Helotage. 

Heuschrecke's  Malthusian  Tract,  and  Teufelsdrockh's 
marginal  notes  thereon.  The  true  workman,  for  daily 
bread,  or  spiritual  bread,  to  be  honored  ;  and  no  other. 
The  real  privation  of  the  Poor  not  poverty  or  toil,  but 
ignorance.  Over-population  :  With  a  world  like  ours 
and  wide  as  ours,  can  there  be  too  many  men  ?  Emi- 
gration, (p.  224.) 

CHAP.  V.   The  Phcenix. 

Teufelsdrockh  considers  Society  as  dead;  its  soul 
(Religion)  gone,  its  body  (existing  Institutions)  going. 
Utilitarianism,  needing  little  farther  preaching,  is  now 
in  full  activity  of  destruction. — Teufelsdrockh  would 
yield  to  the  Inevitable,  accounting  that  the  best ;  As- 
surance of  a  fairer  Living  Society,  arising,  Phoenix-like, 
out  of  the  ruins  of  the  old  dead  one.  Before  that 
Phoenix  death-birth  is  accomplished,  long  time,  strug- 
gle and  suffering  must  intervene,  (p.  229.) 

CHAP.  VI.    Old  Clothes. 

Courtesy  due  from  all  men  to  all  men  :  The  Body  of 
Man  a  Revelation  in  the  Flesh.  Teufelsdrockh's  respect 
for  Old  Clothes,  as  the  "Ghosts  of  Life."  Walk  in 
Monmouth  Street,  and  meditations  there,  (p.  236.) 

CHAP.   VII.    Organic  Filaments. 

Destruction  and  Creation  ever  proceed  together  ;  and 
organic  filaments  of  the  Future  are  even  now  spinning. 
Wonderful  connection  of  each  man  with  all  men  ;  and 
of  each  generation  with  all  generations,  before  and 
after  :  Mankind  is  One.  Sequence  and  progress  of  all 


SUMMARY.  313 

human  work,  whether  of  creation  or  destruction,  from 
age  to  age. — Titles,  hitherto  derived  from  Fighting, 
must  give  way  to  others.  Kings  will  remain  and  their 
title.  Political  Freedom,  not  to  be  attained  by  any 
mechanical  contrivance.  Hero-worship,  perennial 
amongst  men  ;  the  cornerstone  of  polities  in  the  Future. 
Organic  filaments  of  the  New  Religion  :  Newspapers 
and  Literature.  Let  the  faithful  soul  take  courage  1 
(p.  242.) 

CHAP.  VIII.  Natural  Supernaturalism. 

Deep  significance  of  Miracles.  Littleness  of  human 
Science  :  Divine  incomprehensibility  of  Nature.  Cus- 
tom blinds  us  to  the  miraculousness  of  daily-recurring 
miracles  ;  so  do  Names.  Space  and  Time,  appearances 
only  ;  forms  of  human  Thought  :  A  glimpse  of  Immor- 
tality. How  Space  hides  from  us  the  wondrousness  of 
our  commonest  powers  ;  and  Time,  the  divinely  mirac- 
ulous course  of  human  history,  (p.  252.) 

CHAP.   IX.    Circumspective. 

Recapitulation.  Editor  congratulates  the  few  British 
readers  who  have  accompanied  Teufelsdrockh  through 
all  his  speculations.  The  true  use  of  the  Sartor  Resar- 
lus,  to  exhibit  the  Wonder  of  daily  life  and  common 
things ;  and  to  show  that  all  Forms  are  but  Clothes, 
and  temporary.  Practical  inferences  enough  will  fol- 
low, (p.  265.) 

CHAP.   X.   The  Dandiacal  Body. 

The  Dandy  defined.  The  Dandiacal  Sect  a  new 
modification  of  the  primeval  superstition  Self-worship  : 
How  to  be  distinguished.  Their  Sacred  Books  (Fashion- 


SUMMARY. 

able  Novels)  unreadable.  Dandyism's  Articles  of  Faith. 
— Brotherhood  of  Poor-Slaves ;  vowed  to  perpetual 
Poverty  ;  worshippers  of  Earth  ;  distinguished  by  pecul- 
iar costume  and  diet.  Picture  of  a  Poor-Slave  House- 
hold ;  and  of  a  Dandiacal.  Teufelsdrockh  fears  these 
two  Sects  may  spread,  till  they  part  all  England  be- 
tween them,  and  then  frightfuHy  collide,  (p.  270.) 

CHAP.   XL    Tailors. 

Injustice  done  to  Tailors,  actual  and  metaphorical. 
Their  rights  and  great  services  will  one  day  be  duly  rec- 
ognized, (p.  285.) 

CHAP.  XII.  Farewell. 

Teufelsdrockh's  strange  manner  of  speech,  but  reso- 
lute, truthful  character  :  His  purpose  seemingly  to  pros- 
elytize, to  unite  the  wakeful  earnest  in  these  dark 
times.  Letter  from  Hofrath  Heuschrecke  announcing 
that  Teufelsdrockh  has  disappeared  from  Weissnichtwo. 
Editor  guesses  he  will  appear  again.  Friendly  Fare- 
well, (p.  289.) 


A  series  of  romances  containing  several  of  the  old  favorites  in  the  field 
of  historical  fiction,  replete  with  powerful  romances  of  love  and  diplomacy 
that  excel  in  thrilling  and  absorbing  interest. 


D  ARNLEY .  A  Romance  of  the  times  of  Henry  VIII.  and  Cardinal  Wolsey. 
By  G.  P.  R.  James.  Cloth,  121110.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson  Davis. 
Price,  Ji.oo. 


LliC     CLU1.11UI       SCL      CLUUUl      LilC      WUIK. 

As  a  historical  romance  "Darnley"  is  a  book  that  can  be  taken  up 
pleasurably  again  and  again,  for  there  is  about  it  that  subtle  charm  which 
those  who  are  strangers  to  the  works  of  G.  P.  R.  James  have  claimed  wa» 
only  to  be  imparted  by  Dumas. 

If  there  was  nothing  more  about  the  work  to  attract  especial  attention, 
the  account  of  the  meeting  of  the  kings  on  the  historic  "field  of  the  cloth  of 
gold"  would  entitle  the  story  to  the  most  favorable  consideration  of  every 
reader. 

There  is  really  but  little  pure  romance  in  this  story,  for  the  author  has 
taken  care  to  imagine  love  passages  only  between  those  whom  history  has 
credited  with  having  entertained  the  tender  passion  one  for  another,  and 
he  succeeds  in  making  such  lovers  as  all  the  world  must  love. 

CAPTAIN  BRAND,  OF  THE  SCHOONER  CENTIPEDE.  By  I,ieut. 
Henry  A.  Wise,  U.  S.  N.  (Harry  Gringo).  Cloth,  jamo.  with  four  illustra- 
tions "by  J.  Watson  Davis.  Price,  $1.00. 

The  re-publication  of  this  story  will  please  those  lovers  of  sea  yarn* 
who  delight  in  so  much  of  the  salty  flavor  of  the  ocean  as  can  come  through 
the  medium  of  a  printed  page,  for  never  has  a  story  of  the  sea  and  those 
"who  go  down  in  ships"  been  written  by  one  more  familiar  with  the  scenes 
depicted. 

The  one  book  of  this  gifted  author  which  is  best  remembered,  and  which 
will  be  read  with  pleasure  for  many  years  to  come,  is  "Captain  Brand," 
who,  as  the  author  states  on  his  title  page,  was  a  "pirate  of  eminence  in 
the  West  Indies."  As  a  sea  story  pure  and  simple,  "Captain  Brand"  has 
never  been  excelled,,  and  as  a  story  of  piratical  life,  told  without  the  usual 
embellishments  of  blood  and  thunder,  It  has  no  equal. 

NICK  OF  THE  WOODS.  A  story  of  the  Early  Settlers  of  Kentucky.  By 
Robert  Montgomery  Bird.  Cloth,  I2tno.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson 
Davis.  Price,  Ji.oo. 

This  most  popular  novel  and  thrilling  story  of  early  frontier  life  in 
Kentucky  was  originally  published  in  the  year  1837.  The  novel,  long  out  of 
print,  had  in  its  day  a  phenomenal  sale,  for  its  realistic  presentation  of 
Indian  and  frontier  life  in  the  early  days  of  settlement  in  the  South,  nar- 
rated in  the  tale  with  all  the  art  of  a  practiced  writer.  A  very  charming 
love  romance  runs  through  the  story.  This  new  and  tasteful  edition  of 
"Nick  of  the  Woods"  will  be  certain  to  make  many  new  admirers  for 
this  enchanting  story  from  Dr.  Bird's  clever  and  versatile  pen. 

For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  sent  postpaid  on  receipt  of  price  by  the  pub- 
lishers, A.  L.  BURT  COMPAN  i ,  53-58  Duane  St.,  New  York. 


Good  Fiction  Worth  Reading. 

A  series  of  romances  containing  several  of  the  old  favorites  in  the  field 
of  historical  fiction,  replete  with  powerful  romances  of  love  and  diplomacy 
;hat  excel  in  thrilling  and  absorbing  interest. 


GUY  FAWKES.  A  Romance  of  the  Gunpowder  Treason.  By  Wm.  Harri- 
son Ainsworth.  Cloth,  lamo.  with  four  illustrations  by  George  Cruikshank. 
Price,  $1.00. 

The  "Gunpowder  Plot"  was  a  modest  attempt  to  blow  up  Parliament, 
the  King  and  his  Counsellors.  James  of  Scotland,  then  King  of  England, 
was  weak-minded  and  extravagant  He  hit  upon  the  efficient  scheme  of 
extorting  money  from  the  people  by  imposing  taxes  on  the  Catholics.  In 
their  natural  resentment  to  this  extortion,  a  handful  of  bold  spirits  con- 
cluded to  overthrow  the  government.  Finally  the  plotters  were  arrested, 
and  the  King  put  to  torture  Guy  Fawkes  and  the  other  prisoners  with 
royal  vigor.  A  very  intense  love  story  runs  through  the  entire  romance. 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  BORDER.  A  Romance  of  the  Early  Settlers  in  the 
Ohio  Valley.  By  Zane  Grey.  Cloth,  izrno.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson 
Davis.  Price,  $i .  oo. 

A  book  rather  out  of  the  ordinary  is  this  "Spirit  of  the  Border."  The 
main  thread  of  the  story  has  to  do  with  the  work  of  the  Moravian  mis- 
sionaries in  the  Ohio  Valley.  Incidentally  the  reader  is  given  details  of  the 
frontier  life  of  those  hardy  pioneers  who  broke  the  wilderness  for  the  plant- 
ing of  this  great  nation.  Chief  among  these,  as  a  matter  of  course,  is 
Lewis  Wetzel,  one  of  the  most  peculiar,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most 
admirable  of  all  the  brave  men  who  spent  their  lives  battling  with  the 
savage  foe,  that  others  might  dwell  in  comparative  security. 

Details  of  the  establishment  and  destruction  of  the  Moravian  "Village 
of  Peace"  are  given  at  some  length,  and  with  minute  description.  The 
efforts  to  Christianize  the  Indians  are  described  as  they  never  have  been 
before,  and  the  author  has  depicted  the  characters  of  the  leaders  of  the 
several  Indian  tribes  •with  great  care,  which  of  itself  will  be  of  interest  to 
the  student. 

By  no  means  least  among  the  charms  of  the  story  are  the  vivfd  word- 
pictures  of  the  thrilling  adventures,  and  the  intense  paintings  of  the  beau- 
ties of  nature,  as  seen  in  the  almost  unbroken  forests. 

It  is  the  spirit  of  the  frontier  which  is  described,  and  one  can  by  it, 
perhaps,  the  better  understand  why  men,  and  women,  too,  willingly  braved 
every  privation  and  danger  that  the  westward  progress  of  the  star  of  em- 
pire might  be  the  more  certain  and  rapid.  A  love  story,  simple  and  tender, 
runs  through  the  book. 

RICHELIEU.  A  tale  of  France  in  the  reign  of  King  I^ouis  Xin.  By  G.  P. 
R.  James.  Cloth,  izmo.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson  Davis.  Price,  Ji.oo. 

In  1829  Mr.  James  published  his  first  romance,  "Richelieu,"  and  was 
recognized  at  once  as  one  of  the  masters  of  the  craft. 

In  this  book  he  laid  the  story  during  those  later  days  of  the  great  car- 
dinal's life,  when  his  power  was  beginning  to  wane,  but  while  it  was 
yet  sufficiently  strong  to  permit  now  and  then  of  volcanic  outbursts  which 
overwhelmed  foes  and  carried  friends  to  the  topmost  wave  of  prosperity. 
One  of  the  most  striking  portions  of  the  story  is  that  of  Cinq  Mar's  conspir- 
acy; the  method  of  conducting  criminal  cases,  and  the  political  trickery 
resorted  to  by  royal  favorites,  affording  a  better  insight  into  the  state- 
craft of  that  day  than  can  be  had  even  by  an  exhaustive  study  of  history. 
It  is  a  powerful  romance  of  love  and  diplomacy,  and  in  point  of  thrilling 
and  absorbing  Interest  has  never  been  excelled. 

For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  sent  postpaid  on  receipt  of  price  by  the  pub- 
lishers, A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY,  53-58  Duane  St.,  New  York. 


Good  Fiction  Worth  Reading. 

A  series  of  romances  containing  several  of  the  old  favorites  in  the  field 
of  historical  fiction,  replete  with  powerful  romances  of  love  and  diplomacy 
that  excel  in  thrilling  and  absorbing  interest. 


A  COLONIAL  FREE-LANCE.  A  story  of  American  Colonial  Times.  By 
Chauncey  C.  Hotchkiss.  Cloth,  I2mo.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson 
Davis.  Price,  $1.00. 

A  book  that  appeals  to  Americans  as  a  vivid  picture  of  Revolutionary 
scenes.  The  story  is  a  strong  one,  a  thrilling  one.  It  causes  the  true 
American  to  flush  with  excitement,  to  devour  chapter  after  chapter,  until 
the  eyes  smart,  and  it  fairly  smokes  with  patriotism.  The  love  story  is  a 
singularly  charming  idyl. 

THE  TOWER  OF  LONDON.  A  Historical  Romance  of  the  Times  of  Lady 
Jane  Grey  and  Mary  Tudor.  By  Wm.  Harrison  Ainsworth.  Cloth,  I2mo.  with 
four  illustrations  by  George  Cruikshank.  Price,  $1.00. 

This  romance  of  the  "Tower  of  London"  depicts  the  Tower  as  palace, 
prison  and  fortress,  with  many  historical  associations.  The  era  is  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  story  is  divided  into  two  parts,  one  dealing  with  Lady  Jane  Grey, 
and  the  other  with  Mary  Tudor  as  Queen,  introducing  other  notable  char- 
acters of  the  era.  Throughout  the  story  holds  the  interest  of  the  reader 
in  the  midst  of  intrigue  and  conspiracy,  extending  considerably  over  a 
half  a  century. 

IN  DEFIANCE  OF  THE  KING.  A  Romance  of  the  American  Revolution. 
By  Chauncey  C.  Hotchkiss.  Cloth,  I2mo.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson 
Davis.  Price,  Ji.oo. 

Mr.  Hotchkiss  has  etched  in  burning  words  a  story  of  Yankee  bravery, 
and  true  love  that  thrills  from  beginning  to  end,  with  the  spirit  of  the 
Revolution.  The  heart  beats  quickly,  and  we  feel  ourselves  taking  a 
part  in  the  exciting  scenes  described.  His  whole  story  is  so  absorbing 
that  you  will  sit  up  far  into  the  night  to  finish  it.  As  a  love  romance 
It  is  charming. 

GARTHOWEN.  A  story  of  a  Welsh  Homestead.  By  Allen  Raine.  Cloth, 
I2mo.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson  Davis.  Price,  $1.00. 

"This  is  a  little  idyl  of  humble  life  and  enduring  love,  laid  bare  before 
us,  very  real  and  pure,  which  in  its  telling  shows  us  some  strong  points  of 
-Welsh  character— the  pride,  the  hasty  temper,  the  quick  dying  out  of  wrath. 
We  call  this  a  well-written  story,  interesting  alike  through  its 
romance  and  its  glimpses  into  another  life  than  ours.  A  delightful  and 
clever  picture  of  Welsh  village  life.  The  result  is  excellent."— Detroit  Free 
Press. 

MIFANWY.  The  story  of  a  Welsh  Singer.  By  Allan  Raine.  Cloth, 
izmo.  with  four  illustrations  by  J.  Watson  Davis.  Price,  |i.oo. 

"This  is  a  love  story,  simple,  tender  and  pretty  as  one  would  care  to 
read.  The  action  throughout  is  brisk  and  pleasing;  the  characters,  it  is  ap- 
parent at  once,  are  as  true  to  life  as  though  the  author  had  known  them 
all  personally.  Simple  in  all  its  situations,  the  story  is  worked  up  in  that 
touching  and  quaint  strain  which  never  grows  wearisome,  no  matter  how 
often  the  lights  and  shadows  of  love  are  introduced.  It  rings  true,  and 
does  not  tax  the  imagination." — Boston  Herald. 


sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  sent  postpaid  on  receipt  of  price  by  the  pub- 
lishers. A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY*  *»-«8  Duane  St..  New  York. 


Good  Fiction  Worth  Reading. 

A  series  of  romances  containing  several  of  the  old  favorites  in  the  field 
of  historical  fiction,  replete  with  powerful  romances  of  love  and  diplomacy 
that  excel  in  thrilling  and  absorbing  interest. 


WINDSOR  CASTLE.  A  Historical  Romance  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  VIII., 
Catharine  of  Aragon  and  Anue  Boleyn.  By  Wm.  Harrison  Ainsworth.  Cloth, 
i2mo.  with  four  illustrations  by  George  Cruikshank.  Price,  $1.00. 

"Windsor  Castle"  is  the  story  of  Henry  VIII.,  Catharine,  and  Anne 
Boleyn.  "Bluff  King  Hal,"  although  a  well-loved  monarch,  was  none  too 
good  a  one  in  many  ways.  Of  all  his  selfishness  and  unwarrantable  acts, 
none  was  more  discreditable  than  his  divorce  from  Catharine,  and  his  mar- 
riage to  the  beautiful  Anne  Boleyn.  The  King's  love  was  as  brief  as  it 
was  vehement.  Jane  Seymour,  waiting  maid  on  the  Queen,  attracted  him, 
and  Anne  Boleyn  was  forced  to  the  block  to  make  room  for  her  successor. 
This  romance  is  one  of  extreme  interest  to  all  readers. 

HORSESHOE  ROBINSON.  A  tale  of  the  Tory  Ascendency  in  South  Caro- 
lina in  1780.  By  John  P.  Kennedy.  Cloth,  I2mo.  with  four  illustrations  by  J. 
Watson  Davis.  Price,  |i.oo. 

Among  the  old  favorites  in  the  field  of  what  Is  known  as  historical  fic- 
tion, there  are  none  which  appeal  to  a  larger  number  of  Americans  than ' 
Horseshoe  Robinson,  and  this  because  it  is  the  only  story  which  depicts 
with  fidelity  to  the  facts  the  heroic  efforts  of  the  colonists  in  South  Caro- 
lina to  defend  their  homes  against  the  brutal  oppression  of  the  British 
under  such  leaders  as  Cornwallis  and  Tarleton. 

The  reader  is  charmed  with  the  story  of  love  which  forms  the  thread 
of  the  tale,  and  then  impressed  with  the  wealth  of  detail  concerning  those 
time.:.  The  picture  of  the  manifold  sufferings  of  the  people,  is  never  over- 
drawn, but  painted  faithfully  and  honestly  by  one  who  spared  neither 
time  nor  labor  in  his  efforts  to  present  in  this  charming  love  story  all  that 
price  in  blood  and  tears  which  the  Carolinians  paid  as  their  share  in  the 
winning  of  the  republic. 

Take  It  all  In  all,  "Horseshoe  Robinson"  is  a  work  which  should  be 
found  on  every  book-shelf,  not  only  because  it  is  a  most  entertaining 
story,  but  because  of  the  wealth  of  valuable  information  concerning  the 
colonists  which  it  contains.  That  it  has  been  brought  out  once  more,  well 
Illustrated,  is  something  which  will  give  pleasure  to  thousands  who  have 
long  desired  an  opportunity  to  read  the  story  again,  and  to  the  many  who 
have  tried  vainly  in  these  latter  days  to  procure  a  copy  that  they  might 
read  it  for  the  first  time. 

THE  PEARL  OP  ORR'S  ISLAND.  A  story  of  the  Coast  of  Maine.  By 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  Cloth,  I2mo.  Illustrated.  Price,  $1.00. 

Written  prior  to  1862,  the  "Pearl  of  Orr's  Island"  is  ever  new;  a  book 
filled  with  delicate  fancies,  such  as  seemingly  array  themselves  anew  each 
time  one  reads  them.  One  sees  the  "sea  like  an  unbroken  mirror  all 
around  the  pine-girt,  lonely  shores  of  Orr's  Island,"  and  straightway 
comes  "the  heavy,  hollow  inoan  of  the  surf  on  the  beach,  like  the  wild 
angry  howl  of  some  savage  animal." 

Who  can  read  of  the  beginning-  of  that  sweet  life,  named  Mara,  which 
came  into  this  world  under  the  very  shadow  of  the  Death  angel's  wings, 
without  having  an  Intense  desire  to  know  how  the  premature  bud  blos- 
somed? Again  and  again  one  lingers  over  the  descriptions  of  the  char- 
acter of  that  baby  boy  Moses,  who  came  through  the  tempest,  amid  the 
angry  billows,  pillowed  on  his  dead  mother's  breast. 

There  Is  no  more  faithful  portrayal  of  New  England  life  than  that 
which  Mrs.  Stowe  gives  in  "The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island." 

For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  sent  postpaid  on  receipt  of  price  by  the  pub- 
lishers, A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY,  52-58  Duane  St.,  New  York. 


BURT'S  HOME  LIBRARY. 


Comprising  four  hundred  and  fourteen  titles  of 
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tion. Printed  from  large  type  on  good  paper,  &nd 
bound  in  handsome  uniform  cloth  binding. 


Uniform  Cloth  Binding.  Gilt  Tops.  Price,  $1.00. 


Abbe  Constantin.     By  L.   Halevy. 

Abbot.     By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Adam  Bede.     By  Ge'orge  Eliot. 

Aesop's  Fables. 

Alhambra.     Washington  Irving. 

Alicp  in  Wonderland,  and  Through 
the  Looking  Glass.  By  Lewis 
Carroll. 

Alice  Lorraine.     R.  D.  Blackmore. 

All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men. 
By  Besant  and  Rice. 

Amiel's  Journal.  Translated  by 
Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward. 

Andersen's  Fairy  Tales. 

Anne  of  Geiersteln.  By  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott. 

Antiquary.     Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Arabian  Nights'  Entertainments. 

Ardath.     By   Marie   Corelli. 

Armadalc,     By  Wllkie  Collins. 

Arinorel  of  Lyonesse.     W.  Besant. 

Arnold's  Poems.  Matthew  Arnold. 

Around  the  World  In  the  Yacht 
Sunbeam.  By  Mrs.  Brassey. 

Arundel  Motto.     Mary  Cecil  Hay. 

At  the  Back  of  the  North  Wild. 
By  George  Macdonald. 

Attic  Philosopher.     E.  Souvestre. 

Auld  Licht  Idyls.     J.  M.  Barrie. 

Aunt  Diana.     By  Rosa  N.  Carey. 

Aurelian.     By  William  Ware. 

Autobiography  of  B.  Franklin. 

Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table. 
By  O.  W.  Holmes. 

Averil.     By  Rosa  N.  Carey. 

Bacon's  Essays.     Francis  Bacon. 

Barbara  Heathcote's  Trial.  Rosa 
N.  Carey. 

Barnaby  Rudge.     Charles  Dickens. 

Barrack-Room  Ballads.  Rudyard 
Kipling. 

Betrothed.     Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Beulah.     By  Augusta  J.  Evans. 

Black  Beauty.     By  Anna  Sewell. 

Black  Dwarf.     Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Black  Rock.     By  Ralph  Connor. 

Bleak  House.     Charles  Dickens. 

Bondman,  The.     By  Hall  Calne. 

Bride  of  Lammermoor.  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott. 

Bride  of  the  Nile,  The.  George 
Bbers. 

Browning's  Poems.  Elizabeth  Bar- 
rett Browning. 

Browning's    Poems.      (Robert.) 

Bryant's  Poems.     W.  C.  Bryant. 

Burgomaster's  Wife.     Geo.  Ebers. 

Burns'  Poems.     By  Robert  Burns. 

By  Order  of  the  King.     V.  Hugo. 

Byron's  Poems.     By  Lord  Byron. 

California  and  Oregon  Trail.  By 
Francis  Parkman,  Jc. 


Carey's  Poems.  By  Alice  and 
Phoebe  Carey. 

Cast  Up  by  the  Sea.  By  Sir  Sam- 
uel Baker. 

Caxtons.     Bulwer-Lytton. 

Chandos.     By  "Ouida." 

Charles   Auchester.     E.    Berger. 

Character.     By  Samuel  Smiles. 

Charles  O'Malley.     Charles  Lever. 

Chevalier  de  Maison  Rouge.  By 
Alexandra  Dumas. 

Chicot  the  Jester.     Alex.  Dumas. 

Children  of  the  Abbey.  By  Regiua 
Maria  Roche. 

Children  of  Gibeon.     W.  Besant. 

Child's  History  of  England.  By 
Charles  Dickens. 

Christmas  Stories.  Chas.   Dickens. 

Clara  Vaughan.   R.  D.  Blackmore. 

Cloister  and  the  Hearth.  Charted 
Reade. 

Coleridge's  Poems.  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge. 

Complete  Angler.  Walton  &  Cot- 
ton. 

Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater- 
By  Thomas  De  Quincey. 

Conquest  of  Granada.  Washing' 
ton  Irving. 

Consuelo.     By  George  Sand. 

Corinne.     By   Madame   De   Stael. 

Countess  de  Charny.     A.  Dumas. 

Countess  Gisela.     E.   Marlitt. 

Countess  of  Rudolstadt.  By  Geo. 
Sand. 

Count  Robert  of  Paris.     W.  Scott. 

Courtship  of  Miles  Standish.  Bj 
H.  W.  Longfellow. 

Cousin  Pons.     By  H.  de  Balzac. 

Cradock  Newell.  By  B.  D.  Black- 
more. 

Cranford.     By   Mrs.   Gaskell. 

Crlpps  the  Carrier.  R.  D.  Black, 
more. 

Crown  of  Wild  Olive.     J.  Rnskln. 

Daniel  Drronda.     George  Eliot. 

Data  of  Ethics.     H.   Spencer. 

Daughter  of  an  Empress.  B» 
Louisa  Muhlbach. 


BURT'S  HOME  LIBRARY—  Continued.      Price  81.OO  per  Copy. 


Daughter  of  Heth.     Wm.   Black. 

David  Copperfleld.     Chas.  Dickens. 

Days  of  Bruce.     Grace  Aguilar. 

Deemster,  The.     By  Hall  Calne. 

Deerslayer.     By  J.  F.  Cooper. 

Descent  of  Man.     Charles  Darwin. 

Dick  Sand.     By  Jules  Verne. 

Discourses   of    Eplctetus.      Trans- 
lated by  George  Long. 

Divine  Comedy.     (Dante.)     Trans- 
lated by  Rev.  H.  F.  Carey. 

Dombey  &  Son.     Charles  Dickens. 

Donal  Grant.     Geo.  Macdonald. 

Donovan.     By    Edna    Lyall. 

Dora  Deane.     Mary  J.   Holmes. 

Dove    In    the    Eagle's    Nest.     By 
Charlotte  M.   Yonge. 

Dream  Life.     By  Ik  Marvel. 

Duty.     By  Samuel  Smiles. 

Early    Days    of    Christianity.     By 
F.  W.  Farrar. 

East  Lynne.     Mrs.  Henry  Wood. 

Education.     By  Herbert  Spencer. 

Egoist.     By    George   Meredith. 

Egyptian  Princess.     Geo.  Ebers. 

Eight    Hundred    Leagues    on    the 
Amazon.     By  Jules  Verne. 

Eliot's  Poems.     By  George  Eliot. 

Emerson's  Essays.     (Complete.) 

Emerson's    Poems.     Ralph    Waldo 
Emerson. 

Emperor,  The.     By  George  Ebers. 

English  Orphans.     M.  J.  Holmes. 

Essays  of  Elia.     Charles  Lamb. 

Esther.     By  Rosa  N.   Carey. 

Evangellne.      H.    W.    Longfellow. 

Executor.     Mrs.   Alexander. 

Fair  Maid  of  Perth.     By  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott. 

Fairy  Land  of  Science.     By  Ara- 
bella B.   Buckley. 

Far  From  the  Madding  Crowd.  By 

Thomas  Hardy. 

Faust.     (Goethe.)     Translated    by 
Anna  Swanwlck. 

Felix   Holt.     By  George  Eliot. 

Fifteen    Decisive    Battles    of    the 
World.     By   E.   S,   Creasy. 

File  No.  113.     Emile  Gaboriau. 

Firm  of  Girdlestone.  By  A.  Conan 
Doyle. 

First  Principles.     H.  Spencer. 

First  Violin.     Jessie  Fothergill. 

For  Faith  and  Freedom.     Walter 
Besant. 

Fortunes  of  Nigel.     Walter  Scott. 

Forty-Five   Guardsmen.  Alexandra 
Dumas. 

Fragments  of  Science.  J.  Tyndnll. 

Frederick     the     Great     and     His 
Court.     Louisa  Muhlbach. 

French  Revolution.     T.   Carlyle. 

From  the  Earth  to  the  Moon.    By 

Jules  Verne. 
Goethe    and    Schiller.     By   Louisa 

Muhlbach. 

Gold  Bug.     By  Edgar  A.  Poe. 
Gold  Elsie.     By  E.   Mftrlltt. 
Golden  Treasury,  The.     Francis  T. 

Palgrave. 

Goldsmith's  Po<?ms. 
Good  Luck.     By  F-.  Werner. 
Grandfather's     Chair.      Nathaniel 

Hawthorne. 
Gray'e  Foenjs.    Thomas  Gray. 


Great  Expectations.  By  Dickens. 
Greek  Heroes.  Charles  Klngsley. 
Green  Mountain  Boys,  The.  By 

D.   P.  Thompson. 
Grimm's  Household  Tales. 
Grimm's  Popular  Tales. 
Gulliver's  Travels.     Dean  Swift. 
Guy  Mannering.     Walter  Scott. 
Handy  Andy.     By  Samuel  Lover. 
Hardy   Norseman.     Edna   Lyall. 
Harold.     By   Bulwer-Lytton. 
Harry   Lorrequer.     Charles  Lever. 
Heart  of  Midlothian.     By  Scott. 
Heir  of   Redclyffe.     By   Charlotte 

M.  Yonge. 
Hemans'  Poems.     By  Mrs.  Felicia 

Hemans. 

Henry    Esmond.     W.    M.    Thack- 
eray. 

Her    Dearest   Foe.     Mrs.    Alexan- 
der. 

Herlot's  Choice.     Rosa  N.  Carey. 
Heroes  and  Hero  Worship.     Thos. 

Carlyle. 

Hiawatha.     H.  W.  Longfellow. 
History  of  a  Crime.    Victor  Hugo. 
History  of  Civilization  in  Europe. 

By  Guizot. 

Holmes'  P»ems.     O.  W.  Holmes. 
Holy  Romau  Empire.     Jas.  Bryce. 
Homo  Sum.     By  George  Ebers. 
Hood's  Poems.     Thomas  Hood. 
House   of   the    Seven    Gables.     By 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
House   of   the    Wolf.     By   Stanley 

J.  Weyman. 
Hunchback    of    Notre    Dame.     By 

Victor  Hugo. 

Hypatia.     By  Charles  Kingsley. 
Iceland  Fisherman.     Pierre  Loti. 
Idle  Thoughts  of  an  Idle  Fellow. 

By  Jerome  K.  Jerome. 
Iliad,    The.     Pope's    Translation. 
Ingelow's  Poems. 
Initials.     Baroness  Tautphoeus. 
Intellectual    Life.      By    Philip    G. 

Hamerton. 
In  the  Counselor's  House.     By  B. 

Marlitt. 

.  In  the  Golden  Days.     Edna  Lyall. 
In    the    Schillingscourt.     E.    Mar- 
litt. 
It    is    Never   Too   Late    to   Mend. 

By  Charles  Reade. 
Ivanhoe.     By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
Jack's  Courtship.     W.  C.   Russell. 
Jack   Hinton.     By   Charlos   Lever. 
Jane    Eyre.     Charlotte    Bronte. 
John  Halifax.     By  Miss  Mulock. 
Joshua.     By  George  Ebers. 
Joseph  Bnlsamo.     Alex.  Dumas. 
Keats'   Poems.     By  John   Keats. 
Kenilworth.     By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
Kidnapped.     By   R.   L.   Stevenson. 
Kit  and  Kitty.     R.  D.  Blackmore. 
Knickerbocker's    History    of    New 

York.     Washington  Irving. 
Kith  and  Kin.     Jessie  Fothergill. 
Knight  Errant.     By  Edna  Lyall. 
Koran.     Sale's  Translation. 
Lady  of  the  Lake.     Sir  W.  Scott. 
Lady  with  the  Rubies.  E.  Marlitt. 
Lalla    Rookh.     Thomas   Moore. 
Last  Days  of  Pompeii.    By  Bul- 
wer-Lytton. 


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